


' 




Class ^l— «L>-"5-\- 
Book _ J12- 



o 



En Avant, Messieurs ! 



BEING A 



TUTOR'S COUNSEL TO HIS PUPILS. 



BY THE 



REV. G. H. D. MATHIAS, M.A. 

LATE FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 



VoriuartSf Kinder, Yorwarts ! 

Marshal Blccher (passim). 



PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

1861. 



U\) Ci^W 



^tAxvRttA 



TO HIS GRACE 



THE DUKE OF RICHMOND, 



ORATEFUI, ACKNOWLEDGMENT 



OF CONFIDENCE REPOSED BY HIM 



IN THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE. 



It is to the suggestion of a pupil that the 
publication of the following pages is due. 
Thej were originally scattered hints on 
English composition, subjects for English 
essays, and notes on conversations about 
some of the many points on which the intel- 
ligent observation of those who have been 
lately public school-boys will often ask for 
information. 

Whatever truth there may be in the 
charge of ignorance brought against the 
Alumni of our two largest public schools, 
the author of the following pages can at 
least bear his testimony to their general 
activity of mind and love of information. 
If habits of continuous application are im- 
perfectly developed, yet, according to the 

(V) 



VI PREFACE. 

author's experience, a passive contentment 
with ignorance is almost unknown. It is 
because he believes that there are many 
such beyond the narrow circle of his own 
pupil acquaintance that the author sends 
this volume to the press, hoping that it may 
contain answers (not easily found elsewhere) 
to some of the questions often asked, and 
explanations of subjects often discussed, by 
those who are beginning to take a wider 
interest in the studies and duties of life. 

Septembeb, 1866. 



CONTENTS. 



srj- 



!.__'« Where had I best travel?" 9 

II. — On the study of language 24 

III. — On entering the army 32 

IV. — On entering the army 41 

v. — To a pupil entering the army 57 

VI.— An outline of the life of Sir C. J. Napier ... 67 

VII. — "How is one to write an essay?" 84 

VIIL— On style 97 

IX, — On English composition 109 

X. — On English composition 123 

XI. — On metaphor 137 

XII. — How to make history interesting 156 

XIII. — What is the difference between simile and 

metaphor? 162 

XIV.— On Tennyson 175 

XV.— "What's the use of Shakspeare?" 187 

XVI.— On novels 199 

(vii) 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

XVIL— On novels 210 

XVIII. — To a pupil at the university 221 

XIX.— "How is one to learn to draw?" 231 

XX.— "How awfully tedious work is!" 238 

XXI. — How to give money away , 245 

XXII. — A little learning not a dangerous thing 260 

XXIII.— Hints on the study of Shakspeare , 269 



LETTERS AND ESSAYS. 
I. 

WHERE HAD I BEST TRAVEL? 

^rOTJ tell me you are to travel for a year or so 
-*- before yoa enter your profession ; and you 
ask me what countries I advise you to choose for 
your tour. 

Now before we come to the countries, let me beg 
you not to undervalue this year's travel, and not to 
treat it as mere amusement and nothing more : if 
you do, you will have less amusement after all, and 
no profit from it. Happily there is such a thing 
as ennui ; and time devoted to nothing but idle 
amusement is often as wearisome as it certainly is 
misspent. 

If you were starting for a few months' shooting 
tour, you would carefully look to your equipments ; 
suitable clothes for the climate, guns and ammuni- 

2 (9) 



10 WHERE HAD I BEST TRAVEL? 

tion in plenty, means of repairing any damage done 
to your gear, when far beyond the circle of civili- 
zation : prepare yourself in the above way for your 
year's journey; you have a month or two before 
you start, and much may be, done even in so short 
a time as that. 

And as the knowledge of their language is the 
first and only approach to all knowledge of the 
people, pray rub up all you know of the spoken 
languages of whatever countries you think of visit- 
ing. The two most important languages for conti- 
nental travel are certainly French and Italian : the 
former will carry you through all the civilized parts 
of Germany, while German will take you nowhere 
beyond its own frontier, and Italian will not only 
carry you through its own glorious country — 

"Magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus, 
Magna virum " 

where French is unknown, but through many of 
the cities of the Mediterranean coast beyond the 
boundaries of old Saturn's realm. The more lan- 
guages you know, the more you multiply the ave- 
nues of knowledge and amusement alike in your 
travels; when you are in the midst of foreigners, 



WHERE HAD I BEST TRAVEL? 11 

yon will find how plentiful a harvest may be reaped 
from the labor employed upon their language at 
home. 

You have, I conclude, some special tastes; very 
few have arrived at your age without acquiring 
some — either for art, or natural science, or history, 
or some study or other. Whatever your taste is, 
cultivate it with a view to reproducing it and en- 
larging it upon your travels. Some knowledge of 
history of course you have ; fix it geographically 
before you start. My own especial taste is for 
architecture; I have Jixed my information on that 
subject geographically by underlining in red all the 
places of architectural interest on a traveling map 
of whatever country I am about to visit : by this 
simple expedient I have often been supplied with 
the means of prosecuting a favorite study, when de- 
layed or diverted from my route by accident, and 
have always been able at a single glance to arrange 
a tour so as to comprehend as many objects of 
architectural interest as possible. 

You have little idea, until you try it for yourself, 
how vividly and really historical events come home 
to you when you stand upon the spot which saw 
them take place. In the midst of the bustle of 



12 WHERE HAD I BEST TRAVEL? 

Paris, the Place du Carrousel is again crowded by 
a howling furious mob, the Swiss guards again die 
valiantly at their posts, again the death tumbrel 
rolls incessantly along the monotonous Rue de Ri- 
voli, the guillotine as incessantly falls with its deep 
thud, and above all its victims the deathlike pallor 
of *the royal sufferer remains deepest impressed 
upon the memory. Or at Fontainbleau (for in- 
stance) whole periods sweep before you at a glance, 
from the gay and profligate court of the first Fran- 
cis to the tragic parting in the Cour des Adieux, 
and add to the richness of the Renaissance art the 
interest which the joys and the sorrows of our race 
cannot fail to arouse in any one who has felt the 
truth of the old verse, 

"Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto." 

I have been told that a young under-graduate 
peer, not many years ago, visited the capitals of 
the great Italian republics of the Middle Ages, 
history in hand, and on his return showed himself 
the equal, if not the superior, of his examiners, in 
his knowledge of his subject. I would venture to 
assert a belief that the knowledge he displayed 
was no way superior to the pleasure he had enjoyed 
in the acquisition of it. 



WHERE HAD I BEST TRAVEL? 13 

There are two classes of English travelers whose 
example I recommend you not by any means to 
follow. Do not think, with one class, that when 
you have visited the principal theaters and "places,-' 
you have seen everything, and so rush on to see if 
possible as little of another town ; do not, with 
the other, Murray in hand, painfully plod through 
"sights" which have for you no interest whatever. 
The conduct of the first is simply frivolous and 
silly ; that of the last is another form of the many- 
headed monster, humbug. 

Think of the many different professions, trades, 
employments, which occupy the people of a coun- 
try, and if the history of past times does not inter- 
est you, you may yet learn a good deal — be sure 
we in England are still very far from perfect — from 
foreigners' management in such things as the ad- 
ministration of their army, navy, in the organiza- 
tion of government in its many branches, in agri- 
culture, in education, in medicine, in popular 
amusements, in the conduct of charitable endow- 
ments. You will make some curious discoveries, 
if you keep your eyes open, in many points; how, 
for instance, with but little aid from the taxes, the 
French organize an enormous system of poor-re- 

2* 



14 WHERE HAD I BEST TRAVEL? 

lief; how, with a naturallj poor sandy soil, the 
Belgian and the Hollander will raise many times 
more produce than we can in our land, where their 
system of perpetual manuring is not adopted; how 
Belgian and French manufacturers are beginning 
to undersell ours as makers of machinery which 
Englishmen invented ; how a French freeholder is 
often poorer than an English laborer anywhere 
north of the Trent. If you would appreciate the 
fairness of an English trial, attend, if you can, a 
government prosecution in France ; if ^ou would 
see in their faces where the intellect of France has 
taken refuge, take a turn or two up and down the 
arcades of the Palais de Justice at Paris, and you 
will find yourself in a moment among a race to- 
tally different to the habitues of the Bourse and 
the cafes. If you would understand how far more 
useful educated women may be in their services to 
the poor, when reasonably organized, rather than 
when left each to her own devices, visit some of the 
many creches, i.e. child-homes, or some of the 
hospitals under the tender care of the Soenrs de la 
Charite ; and above all, if you would understand 
the people among whom you are staying, skim 
through their chief newspapers — all the best and 



WHERE HAD I BEST TRAVEL? 15 

some of the worst ; notice their peculiarities, both 
in what they omit and what they insert ; how the 
"padding" of the feuilleton takes the place of 
politics among us ; observe the "conspicuous ab- 
sence" of all notices of public meetings, the care- 
ful repression of any safety-valve for public feeling, 
and yet the bitter hostility between different sec- 
tions of the public, as evinced by the violent lan- 
guage of their antagonistic newspapers, — the 
Steele, for instance, versus the Monde; and you 
will soon understand why there are a hundred thou- 
sand men in barracks encamped within twenty miles 
of the Tuileries, and how it is that the streets 
swarm with bon-bon shops, while you may often 
traverse several in a vain search after a book- 
seller's. 

You will do well, then, to visit a good deal be- 
sides all the theaters and perhaps a museum or 
two ; but yet, I would say, dont visit anything be- 
cause it is the correct thing to do so. You will 
often meet — and it is a humiliating sight — the great 
British traveler earnestly engaged in the conscien- 
tious performance of this sham. I shall not soon 
forget one I met in the old cathedral of Lausanne. 
I was sketching at the time, I recollect, when I 



16 WHERE HAD I BEST TRAVEL? 

heard behind me the well-known tones of the great 
British traveler, this time not in broken French, 
but yet not by any means the purest English ; he 
was employed in describing the cathedral to his 
better-half in good solid sonorous utterances; it 
was exactly as if an English verger had been 
dropped, with all his exact and dreary round of 
information complete, into the Swiss cathedral. 
In vain did the British traveler's poor wife struggle 
to escape from the infliction of a lesson expressed 
in language at least half of which must have been 
unintelligible to both of them; had he not a seri- 
ous duty to do, and does not England expect, etc.? 
On flowed the current of unmeaning words: "The 
triforium and clerestory of this ancient building are 
unique; observe the banded columns of the tower- 
piers; the abaci are, etc. etc." And so on with 
persistent resolution from tower to altar, and from 
altar to porch again; when they finally retired, 
with the conviction of duty nobly done on the part 
of one, and (I hoped) a secret resolve to rebel on 
that of the other. Poor thing! her sufl'erings 
must have been acute, as they certainly were pro- 
longed. I wondered if they had done the whole 
map of Switzerland upon the same scale. 



AVHERE HAD I BEST TRAVEL? It 

Now just as the amount of your shooting is 
limited by the precautions you have taken with 
respect to your guns and ammunition, so you will 
find the pleasure of traveling exactly proportional 
to the knowledge you take with you, and the 
knowledge you are prepared to gain by keeping 
your eyes open and your wits about you while you 
are abroad. And now, I think, you will almost 
have anticipated ray reply to your question : Where 
do you advise me to travel ? 

My answer is, "Exactly where your tastes lead 
you ;" only try and acquire in this as in everything 
tastes as wide and large as possible. If you take 
most delight in scenery, you will, of course, rush to 
the Alps; but while there, seize the opportunity 
of visiting the Swiss people in their homes, in their 
governments, their manufactures, their public festi- 
vals, their religious rites. Some of the Swiss 
governments are very original and instructive; 
their public games, especially in Appenzell and 
the eastern cantons generally, date from days 
when we too had public sports in every village in 
England ; while theirs have lasted through the 
extinction of ours, and now see their revival in the 
form of the volunteer movement, the rifle-practicing, 



18 WHERE HAD I BEST TRAVEL? 

and the gymnasia now being established in our 
large towns. See for yourself whether the asser- 
tion is true — I have heard it both asseverated and 
contradicted — "that there is a marked difference in 
the appearance of the homes, in the cleanliness and 
comfort of the people, between the Roman Catholic 
and the Protestant cantons;" and everywhere try 
and judge for yourself: use the accounts of pre- 
vious travelers much as an able navigator uses an 
old chart, — as a field for observation rather than 
as a standard of faith. 

I remember — in connection with this subject — to 
have read not long ago a very instructive letter of 
the great German poet and philosopher, Goethe, 
dated from Naples, May 28, ItST : he tells his 
correspondent that " the useful and learned Yolck- 
man" (the Murray of his day) "asserts, and no 
one had ever dreamed of contradicting him, that 
there were from 30,000 to 40,000 idlers, vaga- 
bonds, tramps in short, in Italy." Of course 
Naples was their headquarters; so at Naples he 
sets to work to investigate the statement, which 
he does by going among the people at all hours 
and in all places: on the quays he finds a good 
many loungers; but on inquiry they turn out to be 



WHERE HAD I BEST TRAVEL? 19 

wind-bound fishernaen (what hundreds may be en- 
countered at times round our industrious ports I), 
who flitted out of sight at once on the arrival of a 
fair wind. At the principal places in the town he 
found many " idlers," but they were porters and 
cab-drivers waiting for work, and only too glad to 
get some ; in the gardens round the city he found 
laborers unremitting in their toil, driving their 
donkeys laden with garden produce many times a 
day into the city, returning laden with manure, 
vegetable stalks, or any rubbish that could enlarge 
the garden dung heap; and he adds, "the rich 
little think, as they leave the opera at midnight, 
that before break of day some industrious fellow 
will have carefully followed up the tracks of their 
horses with the same object." On the sea-shore he 
watched little children, some not more than three 
or four years old, collecting every scrap of drift- 
wood, and packing it in bundles for the market. 
In the market-place he amused himself with noticing 
the watchful solicitude of a water-melon merchant, 
aged about twelve, over his wares, which he sold in 
slices to some equally watchful customers, who, 
though perhaps his juniors, looked equally anxious 
to secure a fair farthing's worth for their farthing. 



20 WHERE HAD I BEST TRAVEL? 

And you will find in this, as in many other in- 
stances, that much wider questions are opened up 
by using your own powers of observation, and not 
receiving as gospel the somewhat reckless asser- 
tions of preceding travelers. In this case you may 
be led to inquire whether idleness can exist largely 
in a state at all emerged from barbarism ; whether, 
in fact, its existence is not a proof of barbarism 
resulting in great measure from bad government. 
And yet do not suppose that I undervalue good 
books of travels; what I say is, "Don't be im- 
plicitly guided by them:" much may have been 
changed between their date and yours. Read 
some, however, before you start, or rather skim 
through some, to gather what the writer thought 
best worth seeing ; but far better read (not skim) 
a good book of the history of any country you are 
about to visit — that is worth a hundred travelers' 
tales ; while a good book of criticism on the chief 
European galleries is the best cicerone you can hire 
for them. 

Remember, too, that as you go abroad to see 
foreign countries and foreign people, and to hear 
foreign languages spoken, so you will do well to 
avoid the promiscuous swarms of English who fly 



WHERE HAD I BEST TRAVEL? 21 

yearly up the Rliine, through Switzerland, and 
escape homeward by some outlet into France, 
during August and September : you can arrange 
to be not on the Rhine or near the Alps then ; or, 
if this is impossible, make your way to smaller 
places (the English always travel in herds), as, for 
instance, in Switzerland, move on to Lauterbrun- 
nen, instead of cockney Interlachen ; to Brunnen, 
the entrance of the grandest of Swiss water-scenery, 
the Bay of Uri, instead of Lucerne ; to Spietz, a 
thorough Swiss retreat, instead of Thun ; or, bet- 
ter still, get away into St. Gall and the Grisons, 
and the sublime shores of the lake of Wallenstadt, 
away from our countrymen's well-beaten tracks, 
which are lined (as the bottom of the sea from here 
to India is said to be) by empty beer-bottles. 

Few travelers have an idea how much of interest 
is to be found away from the beaten track, which is 
followed, not because it is the best, but because the 
majority of English travelers are limited in point 
of time, and foolish enough to measure their enjoy- 
ment by the distance they have traversed, rather 
than by the objects of interest they have visited. 
It is only within quite modern days that Paris has 
come (to most English travelers) to represent 

3 



22 WHERE HAD I BEST TRAVEL? 

France. Even down to the revolution, there were 
nominally many provincial parliaments, and every- 
where the provinces still give proofs of their former 
independence, having, what is totally wanting in 
England, each a long individual history, at times 
entirely separate from that of France. A traveler 
has really seen but little of France who has not 
visited Kouen and Caen, Tours and Blo'is, Rennes 
and Le Mans, Bordeaux and Rheims, and Nancy, 
and many other ancient cities, over and above Paris, 
Lyons, and Marseilles, which too often represent 
France to the modern English traveler, as he 
hurries on to see Italy, equally ill-represented by 
Genoa, Rome, and Naples. 

And pray do not forget that a gentleman can't 
be too careful not to offend (even unintentio.nal]y) 
the susceptibilities of foreigners. I am afraid that 
we English have acquired — and what is more, de- 
served — a bad character in this respect. Pray do 
your best to recover a better opinion of the man- 
ners of our countrymen among foreign nations. 
We expect them in England to behave quietly in 
our churches ; to remain in them and our law-courts 
bareheaded, and generally to submit to the customs 
and observances of our country : an.d they expect 



WHERE HAD I BEST TRAVEL? 23 

the same of us. We are guests on any soil but our 
own ; and it is ill-manners to set yourself up as a 
judge of your host's etiquette and regulations. 
Much of our ill-manners in former days may, I 
hope, be set down to the score of ignorance; but 
it is pretty widely known now that they don't like 
to see people walk arm-in-arm in a church, or turn- 
ing their backs upon the high altar; and they are 
somewhat indignant, in the smaller towns espe- 
cially, if you do not uncover as a religious proces- 
sion passes. As we know these things, it is a pity 
that our evil repute has not been long ago erased 
from the minds of our continental neighbors. 
"Every mickle makes a muckle." In a year's tour 
you may do not a little to aid in removing this 
opprobrium. It is in reference especially to our 
disregard of the feelings and ideas of others that 
the common French expression has become stereo- 
typed, — "C'est un Anglais; que voulez-vous?" 



II. 

ON THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE, 

"\70U ask me whether there is any principle on 
-^ which a language is to be studied. And I 
must own to not a little astonishment at having 
had the question put to me not by you merely, but 
by men many years your seniors ; because I can't 
for the life of me conceive how Latin (for instance) 
is to be taught at all, except on principle. 

I will explain my meaning more clearly by illus- 
tration. Not long since an excellent mathematical 
scholar told me that he had been obliged (much 
against his wishes) to give up Latin and Greek 
ever since he was fifteen years of age, as he could 
make nothing of them at all ; he much regretted 
his inability to learn a language grammatically, 
because (independently of the sources of informa- 
tion from which he was thus debarred) when in 
India it was of importance to him to know more 
than one of the native languages thoroughly, but 
(24) 



ON THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE. 25 

he never could get beyond the little that his ear 
taught him — a certain conversational fluency, but 
not one word could he ever learn to write cor- 
rectly. 

On inquiry as to wherein his difficulty consisted, 
he told me that it arose from no defect of memory; 
he could easily recollect the meanings of the words 
in a Latin sentence, but he never could get them 
into continuous sense without more toil than the 
results were worth — "le jeu ne vaudrait pas la 
chandelle " — for, after all, the result was but guess- 
work. 

He used, he assured me (and his plan must seem 
to any scholar highly ingenious), to work out a 
sentence on the mathematical rule for permutations 
and combinations: so many changes of the words 
were possible — all possible ones must be tried, and 
the most likely one adopted. Now, I quite believe 
this to be only an exaggerated form of the difficul- 
ties met with by so many in the study of Latin and 
Greek, for want of having the first principles of 
those languages placed before them. On going 
closer into the matter with my mathematical friend, 
he explained his position more clearly by taking a 
Virgil and opening it at haphazard; we lighted on 

3* 



26 ON THE STUDY OP LANGUAGE. 

*' Res dura et regni novitas me talia cogunt 
Moliri, et late fines custode tueri." 

Whicli he considered to mean " he was compelled 
by the novelty of the state of affairs to commit 
many cruel actions, and sentinels protected his wide 
domains;" which, you will see, conveys an idea of 
the meaning of the passage, but as a grammatical 
translation was wrong in every particular. I saw 
at a glance that he had not an idea of the first 
principles on which the Latin language is based. 

Now, all the languages with which you are at all 
likely to have to do — that is to say, the two great 
languages, of the ancient, and two or three of the 
modern world — are based each on one of two prin- 
ciples, or on a mixture of the two. There is really 
a very broad gulf fixed between the ancient and 
modern languages : it is simply this, they inflected 
their substantives, adjectives, and verbs ; and we, 
as a rule, do not. Of all the great modern lan- 
guages the German inflects most, and the English 
least. 

I will make this distinction, this great gulf of 
separation, clearer by continuing our conversation 
relative to these same two lines chosen by the sortes 
Virgilianee. Where, I asked, in your translation 



ON THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE. 2T 

do you get all your small words from — "he," 
"was," *'by," "to," "of," the plural formations 
"sentinels," "domains?" Oh, all these must be 
supplied, as they have none of them in Latin. But, 
excuse me, they have every one of them as rigidly 
and exactly as we have. Where ? I can't see any. 
Will you be good enough to tell me the meaning 
of each word, one by one? Certainly: "res" 
means a " thing, event;" " dura" means "hard ;" 
"regni" means a "kingdom;" "novitas," "nov- 
elty;" "talia," "such;" " cogunt," "compel." 
Pardon me, you have not given the meaning of 
any single word right ; you have translated only a 
part of each word. The Latin word for "event" 
is not "res," but "re ;" for "hard " is not "dura," 
but "dur;" for " kingdom " is "regn;" for "com- 
pel " is "cog." You smile at this, but I am not 
joking ; they are simple facts that I am stating. 
And now, if you want to express the word " event" 
in the nominative case singular, you say "res," you 
affix an "s;" if you want to annex to "dur," 
"hard," the idea of a nominative singular femi- 
nine, you affix an "a;" if you want to say "of a 
kingdom," instead of placing "of" in front, as all 
the foreign languages except German do, you affix 



28 ON THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE. 

an "i" to ''regn;" in fact, "i" means "of;" it 
is no capricious termination ; in this declension 
it can mean nothing else in the singular. Here 
the nominative of the Latin word " novelty " is 
needed ; in more grammatical language you want 
to employ "novelty" as thie subject of the sen- 
tence, so " as " is added to " novit ;" so " talia " is 
not "such," but "such things," — not "such men or 
women," nor " by " nor " with " nor " from " nor 
"of" nor "to such things," but simply "such 
things," nominative or accusative; so "cogDnt"is 
not "compel," that is not enough, but "they are 
compelling," or "they compel;" "cog" equals 
"compel,'^ " unt " equals "they." This is the 
principle, the very opposite of our modern lan- 
guages' principle, and it is carried out to a much 
greater extent in Greek than in Latin. Once mas- 
ter this idea; look carefully for all the small words 
in the right place, namely at the end of the root- 
words, and I will venture to assert that, with your 
mathematical memory, you will not be long before 
you read Latin nearly as easily as you read the 
Times. But would you teach languages that way ? 
Undoubtedly, as soon as the rudiments of the 
grammar are mastered : you must know the Latin 



ON THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE. 29 

" of," and " by," and " from " first, directly you see 
them. How would you learn English if you were 
told that the little words did not signify; or French, 
if the " de " and ''a" and "du," etc., meant any- 
thing or nothing ? You will find instead that 
sometimes in the classical languages more is ex- 
pressed than our more clumsy form of speech can 
cope with ; as with that curious tense, the Greek 
aorist, which is, as its name tells us, of no time at 
all. And though the plan I have suggested may 
not be as amusing as guess-work at first, yet its 
unerring accuracy will soon more than compensate 
for the absence of the excitement of permutations 
and combinations. Listen now ; I will decline you 
a word: the root is "domin," found in Latin in 
" dominari," to rule ; " dominatio," a ruling ; " do- 
minus," a master; found in English in dominion, 
domineer, dominant. But with us, unfortunately, 
when we have taken the root, and formed a sub- 
stantive, or verb, or adjective from it, we can do 
no more ; then they are fixed forever in one form, 
with only the slight inflection of the plural in the 
substantive, and in the verb the disused second per- 
son, domineerest, the participles active and passive. 
Now, if a Roman wanted to express the idea that 



30 ON THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE. 

" lord " was the subject of the sentence, he made 
that unmistakable by adding " us " to the root ; if 
he wanted to express " the property of the lord," 
he said "the property the lord-of," or "res do- 
mini;" putting the "of" after the word it quali- 
fies, instead of before it, and inserting the " of" in 
the place of "us," which was not wanted any 
longer, as the word " lord " had ceased to be the 
subject. And he dealt exactly in the same way 
with the adjective ; so exactly that the declension 
of substantives once well learned, the adjectives 
follow naturally. So with the verb : we say " I 
rule;" the Koman instead said with much more 
terseness "rule-I," "dominor;" instead of "we 
rule," "rule-we," "dominamur." But the powers 
of inflection ranged far beyond this : we have now 
to call in the aid of various clumsy auxiliaries ; 
the Romans did this but seldom ; the Greeks hardly 
ever. To express the simple notion of the imper- 
fect we must introduce " was," and turn the verb 
into the participle : " I was ruling," in Latin " rul- 
ing-was-I," "dominabar;" and far beyond this 
again, " a-man-likely-to-rule " is in Latin one word, 
^'dominaturus." 

I was surprised, I must own, to think that a man- 



ON THE STUDY OP LANGUAGE. 31 

ifestly industrious man should never have had this 
simple and self-evident principle made clear to him. 
For I am sure that half a year's hard study of Latin 
on this principle would have opened to him the 
stores of ancient literature, which he so much de- 
sired to read in their original language. 

You will understand, of course, that I have 
spoken of the simple sentence, or of separate 
clauses in a compound sentence ; but very little 
more knowledge is required to enable you to ana- 
lyze a compound sentence ; hardly more than is 
contained in the simple rule that you must not on 
any consideration put the cart before the horse ; 
that is to say, the relative before its antecedent, or 
the dependent and helpless subjunctive before the 
independent and autocratic indicative. 



Ille 

ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 

TT has been the frequent remark of foreigners, 
-^ after viewing — not without a little secret envy, 
perhaps — our superlatively perfect collections of 
zoology and botany at the Regent's Park and at 
Kew, that it would be' very much to our discredit 
oot to possess such collections, considering our 
opportunities — considering that England stretches 
out her arras over every sea, and has carved out 
for herself some of the finest slices of every conti- 
nent. The argument, which is unanswerable, may 
be applied with equal truth to certain points in 
connection with the gallant profession you have 
just joined. In two respects you have, as a young 
man, unrivaled opportunities over any equal of yours 
joining any other profession whatever. The first is 
time ; the second, travel. Take the case of the 
ordinary professional man, whether barrister, town- 
clergyman, solicitor, merchant, banker, medical 
(32) 



ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 33 

man, — you will find their average of work from 
seven to nine hours a day ; yours (after the first 
few months' drill) is not, I think, understated at 
about three hours. Now, I want you clearly to 
realize this fact to yourself, that you may at least 
enter upon your profession with a knowledge of the 
advantages you have in it. 

Secondly, as regards travel : it would be simply 
foolish to compare or rather contrast your oppor- 
tunities with those of any other professional man ; 
with them a six weeks' tour in Europe is generally 
the extent of their loosest tether. There are but 
two other professions to compare with yours in this 
respect, the English navy and foreign military ser- 
vice. 

An English naval officer has certainly the richest 
opportunities of any man of "seeing the world;" 
but there is this counterbalancing disadvantage — 
his view must necessarily be a partial and in some 
respects a superficial one; he cannot be long ab- 
sent from his ship, and must consequently confine 
his sight-seeing to the outside shell of the countries 
he visits. How many naval officers one meets who 
have been their four years on the Mediterranean 
station, but have had no opportunities of visiting 

4 



34 ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 

Venice, Florence, or even Rome; not to name Da- 
mascus, Cairo, or Jerusalem I 

Of the five great European armies, two, the 
Prussian and the Italian, are confined within the 
limits of their own countries — within hearing of 
their own language ; and therefore the only advant- 
age of travel that their officers can gain through 
their profession is a knowledge of their respective 
countries. The Austrian officer is liable to serve 
from Yenetia in the west to Transylvania in the 
east : but if he is an Austrian, he is regarded as 
an alien oppressor in both countries ; if he is oi 
either province, as the oppressor of the other ; in 
any case 20° of longitude bound the extent of his 
military horizon. The great mass of French officers 
never leave la belle France; in Algeria a compara- 
tively small fraction has had an excellent school for 
irregular warfare ; beyond Algeria, the French pos- 
sessions are trifling, and their military occupation 
not worth mentioning. The Russian officer alone 
is at all on a par with the English in his oppor- 
tunities for seeing the world ; but with all the vast- 
ness of Russia, there is hardly that variety of 
scenery, climate, and na,tural products which the 
English territories afford ; and from the great tedi- 



ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 35 

ousness and expense of moving large bodies" of 
troops through whole continents devoid of rail- 
ways, a Russian officer probably does not in a long 
lifetime traverse one-half of the surface of the 
globe, that many an English subaltern has seen be- 
fore he gets his company. A nation which occupies 
military stations from Montreal to Hong-Kong, 
and from Inverness to Auckland — whose troops 
have within the last few years taken Delhi, Luck- 
now, and Pekin — ought to possess a body of officers 
whose large acquaintance with geography, natural 
history, and foreign countries generally, should 
have a perceptible influence upon the knowledge 
and the thought of modern English society. 

You will have, after allowing a large margin for 
amusements, some hours at least a day which you 
can, if you will, devote to something of more worth 
than the inevitable billiards or the irrepressible 
whist : not that I undervalue the skill required for 
either, especially the latter game ; but they should 
be amusements (a 7nusis), a turning aside from 
more serious studies. What those more serious 
studies should be is decided primarily by your 
choice of a profession; you are bound in honor to 
master that profession both in its principles and 



36 ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 

details. It may be ever so true that the chances 
are against your ever needing that knowledge in 
the field ; but remember that the same shallow 
argument would abolish your profession altogether. 
This is, I know, one of the two poor arguments 
usually brought forward by a young officer against 
making a study of his profession ; the other is as 
baseless, that ^ general, like a poet, "nascitur, non 
fit." Let us examine each in turn. 

The very existence of an army is based on a con- 
tingency, at least with us : with some foreign 
armies, unhappily, the first object of an army is to 
overawe their own people ; with us the one sole 
object is to meet the contingency of foreign war. 
You are therefore bound in honor to the queen and 
country you serve to be in as highly effective a con- 
dition as possible to meet the one contingency for 
which you exist, whenever it may arise. When 
that great man and true soldier, Sir Charles J. 
Napier, was making his original comments for his 
own instruction upon all things military, from 
Alexander and Hannibal to Marshal Saxe and 
Napoleon, what chance do you suppose he thought 
he had of ever bringing that knowledge to the test 
of actual warfare ? He tells us in his diary more 



ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 37 

than once that he thought then he had none. And 
yet liis masterly campaigns in Scinde — campaigns 
equally memorable. for the genius with which they 
were planned and the vigor with which they were 
carried out — were the undoubted results of his 
military thought and studies of more than thirty 
years previously. His original and most efficient 
schemes for camel and baggage corps, his exact 
appreciation of all the duties and difficulties of the 
privates, were the fruit of studies in the " piping 
days of peace," — peace which all men reasonably 
expected to last for at least the next half century. 
In fact, the occurrence of war is always a matter of 
the greatest uncertainty ; we live in a mist until the 
thunder-cloud bursts upon us. The first great Ex- 
hibition was to have inaugurated "a term of uni- 
versal peace;" and the reply to this amiable pro- 
phecy was first the Indian mutiny, then the Cri- 
mean, and thirdly the Italian war, and last and 
greatest, the American civil war. N Depend upon it, 
then, that on the soberest principles of reason, as 
well as on the higher grounds of honor, a soldier 
is bound so to live in peace that war may never 
find him unprepared. 

The other argument, derived from a distortion 



38 ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 

of the truth about heaven-sent genius, is, I am 
afraid, often a merely specious cloak for idleness. 
For, first, we are not speaking 0/ genius at all, but 
of a perfect and most efficient knovjledge of your 
profession. Apply the argument to other pro- 
fessions, — does the barrister, or the civil engineer, 
or the physician refuse to study because he feels his 
industry chilled in the shade of such great names 
as Mansfield, Stephenson, or Jenner ? When you 
know more intimately the lives of great men, you 
will see that their greatness was mainly the result 
of their incessant study of their professions, acting 
upon a capacious memory and a well-disciplined 
reason. It is not a little singular to see how actions 
which appear to the uninformed to be great strokes 
of genius are really (often confessedly) nothing but 
a rapid exercise of memory. 

You know how serious was the disparity of 
numbers and guns between us and the French at 
the battle of the Nile; you know, too, how greatly 
Nelson's stroke of genius was admired by which he 
placed his ships inside the French, between them 
and the shoal water, arguing that "where a large 
French ship could swing, a smaller English one 
could float;" how he thus attacked his enemies on 



ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 30 

their unprepared quarter, since they had not their 
guns in working order that were pointed toward 
the shoal. It was undeniably a master-stroke; but 
that it was not the inspiration of the moment we 
have the best authority for believing, namely, Nel- 
son's own : he told his captains that '^ he remem- 
bered to have heard Lord Hood suggest such an 
attack under similar circumstances." 

Not many years ago, one of the most acute of 
our lawyers, then chief justice, was trying a gang 
of sharpers who had plucked some silly young fel- 
low of all his feathers in a railroad carriage at 
various games of cards. A pack of cards found 
in the possession of these worthies was produced 
during the trial, accompanied by a certificate from 
the London detectives, stating that they had ex- 
amined the pack, and found it an honest one. The 
chief justice took the pack, looked at it carefully 
for a minute or two, while the trial was going on, 
and laid it down. When he came to charge the 
jury, they were not a little astonished by his taking 
up the cards and assuring them that they we7^e a 
sharper's pack, though both the detectives and the 
prosecutor's counsel had failed to discover the fact. 
The prisoners visibly shuddered at the bar; their 



40 ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 

last hope was gone, as the judge assured the jury 
he would instantly name any card they liked to 
draw : he then called their attention to their flowery 
backs, and pointed out a quiet demure-looking little 
flower in one corner with dots for petals, which dots 
he showed them varied in number and position ac- 
cording to the value of the card. On being asked 
afterward how he had detected so clever a fraud, 
the judge simply replied that "he remembered it; 
he had seen something of the kind many years be- 
fore." You will by these instances learn to appre- 
ciate the great force and worth of memory ; and 
pray remember this, that memory is of all mental 
powers the one most capable of improvement by 
cultivation; like good steel, it will bear any amount 
of work and grinding. 

You will now admit that I have given you some 
good reasons for making a study of your profes- 
sion. I will in my next letter suggest what sub- 
jects you can and ought to study. 



IV. 

ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 

rPHE study and mastery of one's profession is, 
-^ you assure me, a very different matter in the 
army to what it is in any other line of life: that 
elsewhere industry almost certainly brings success, 
whereas in the army success is very doubtful in- 
deed, depending upon many other conditions be- 
sides merit. I do not deny the general truth of 
your argument; but let me remind you that suc- 
cess is not the only object in life ; let me again 
urge you to study on the plea of duty, because it 
will make you a more efficient soldier than an ill- 
read and unscientific man can be ; and last (but 
not least) because it will supply healthy occupa- 
tion for the mind, which otherwise is almost cer- 
tain to betake itself to unhealthy occupation. 

Perhaps the greatest drawback in the army, as 
a profession, for a young officer, is the small amount 
of time demanded for his regular duties, and the 

(41) 



42 ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 

slight amount of study requisite to secure his pro- 
motion. By study I don't mean mere book- work, 
far from it ; what I mean I will explain by an ex- 
ample, and will say that a young barrister who had 
no more knowledge of how to conduct a defense 
than many a young officer I have heard of has of 
light-infantry manoeuvres, would soon find his pro- 
motion more than problematical. The only cor- 
rective to this ignorance is a keen conviction in the 
mind of an officer that it is a matter of duty to 
understand his business as well as he would do if 
his daily bread depended on it. 

As regards the subjects of study over and above 
the practical details of his regimental duties, an 
officer has this immense advantage over the mem- 
bers of any other profession, that there is hardly 
one subject in science or literature that does not 
bear directly on the art of war. I do not deny 
that able men in all professions do to their great 
mental profit keep pace (to a certain extent) with 
the discoveries and great intellectual efi'orts of the 
time ; but such study is undertaken rather for re- 
laxation from the severity of their professional 
duties, and can influence and extend their profes- 
sional knowledge very indirectly; but in your case 



ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 43 

all your study will bear directly upon the one great 
point, how to become an abler officer. In litera- 
ture, take for instance military history and biogra- 
phy ; there has not been in modern times a single 
great commander who has not largely profited by 
the experience of those who have gone before him; 
by a knowledge of their knowledge, their abilities, 
their successes, ay, and their errors too ; for, after 
all, war is but a repetition of the same game, with 
slightly different pieces : mountain ranges will have 
to be passed, rivers to be crossed, combinations to 
be effected, commissariat to be supplied, the enemy 
to be outwitted or overwhelmed, to the end of 
time. And now consider what advantages a gen- 
eral possesses who carries about with him, ready for 
instant use, a perfect knowledge of how all these 
and more have been effected by able men before 
him. You can hardly conceive any position in 
which an officer in command of troops can be 
placed which has not been already described in the 
biographies of eminent soldiers : war carried on 
against civilized or barbarous nations in every kind 
of country and climate, with or without allies, allies 
more or less untrustworthy; a position with an 
army well or ill supported by the government at 



44 ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 

home, in a country hostile or friendly, with troops 
your own countrymen or foreigners, with troops 
more or less mutinous, on the march or in trans- 
ports, with sickness or shipwreck to contend against, 
with sickness on the march, from cholera in India 
to frozen limbs in Canada, with bad barrack ac- 
commodation and consequent sickness and ill-feel- 
ing among the men; all these and many more con- 
tingencies of the same nature you will find fully 
recorded in the annals of military histories ; and, 
depend upon it, the knowledge of how others have 
met similar difficulties will be most serviceable to 
any officer, whether general or subaltern, when he 
is himself similiarly situated. 

Much, too, may be learnt from the history of dis- 
asters clearly and honestly told. If you would 
learn how not to carry on a campaign, read the ex- 
pedition to the Isle of Rhe in Charles I.'s time, or 
General Burgoyne's disastrous campaign in the 
American ^ar, or (worse than all) the Walcheren 
expedition. Your greatest difficulty will be in 
choice of subject, you are met by an embarras de 
richesses ; as regards military history, the old ad- 
age of "non multa sed multum" is as true as it is 
in the mastery of all rudimentary knowledge ; begin 



ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 45 

first with a campaign m^apier^s Peninsular War, 
and master it by frequent reading, with a good 
map at your side, so that you could tell the wliole 
of it to a friend as accurately as if you had been 
engaged in it yourself; you will find also the study 
of Napier's criticisms at the end of each grand 
movement an excellent model to form your own 
upon. 

I suppose there is no man who reads at all who 
does not delight in history and biography ; other 
branches of study are far less generally popular ; 
some men cannot witliout the greatest — and there- 
fore the most useless — toil master a language an- 
cient or modern ; others again find themselves re- 
pulsed at their first attempt to scale the heights of 
science ; but all minds alike, whether by nature 
literary or scientific, meet on the common ground 
of history, which of all branches of knowledge is 
happily the one most profitable for a soldier : it is 
a study about which a soldier can make no mistake ; 
he may carry his science, or rather be run away 
with it, for all practical purposes, too far; but you 
can never know too much of the principles upon 
which men in other days and countries have 
achieved success, redeemed losses, or sustained de- 

5 



46 ON ENTERING THE. ARMY. 

feat. It is a study, too, which can be carried out 
anywhere ; books are now happily almost suniversal, 
and history needs no professor or moonshee at your 
side to smooth over difiBculties and correct mis- 
takes ; all your requisites for any amount of study 
are the book itself, a good map, and a note-book to 
make your own comments in. 

But supposing that your naturarl bent of mind 
is toward science, you will find that there is not 
one branch of science from the root — namely, pure 
mathematics — upward, which will not return a rich 
harvest to the soldier-student. Surveying, road- 
making, fortification, architecture, are all founded 
upon the basis of mathematics. I know a young 
officer, who after with great difficulty weathering 
the gale of the army examination, has been of the 
greatest service to his regiment in India by his 
practical knowledge of draining,.building, etc., and 
thus restoring health and quieting panic in bar- 
racks situated — as I am told they often are in In- 
dia — in the most unhealthy localities. Which fact 
reminds me that that branch of science which the 
French call hygiene is a most important study for 
an officer who has to command men in countries 
where, as in Canada, the thermometer sinks to 30° 



ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 47 

below zero, and India, where it rises to 150°; and 
has to do ^his best to preserve his own and his 
men's health under either extreme of temperature. 
A knowledge of the main facts of physiology — 
which I dare say you know is only a long word for 
a man's domestic economy — useful for all, is doubly 
important for one who is intrusted with the health 
of a number of men as stupid and perverse about 
the preservation of their health as English soldiers 
seem to be in all and especially in hot climates. 
" Prevention is better than cure," says the old pro- 
verb ; but really in a hot climate there is no com- 
parison between them at all : by wisdom and firm- 
ness you may prevent disease, where a cure is simply 
hopeless and unlooked for. Now you are almost 
certain to be sent before long to India; there was 
some excuse in former days for a young officer's 
arriving there a "Griffin," raw and inexperienced, 
ignorant of how to meet the exigencies of the cli- 
mate, unable to adapt himself to the circumstances 
of life so different to those at home. There is no 
excuse now; you may, by a little careful reading, 
not about "India" generally (as people loosely 
talk), but about that country in it where you will 
be quartered, — you may know exactly the whole 



48 ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 

life there before you have set foot on its soil ; and 
a very slight knowledge of your own domestic 
economy will convince you that if you are not tem- 
perate, especially in the matter of spirits, you will 
quickly manufacture in propynd persona that great 
delicacy which has long immortalized the ancient 
City of Strasburg. 

In the East, which is now the best, almost the 
only field for distinction open to a young officer, 
the passports to distinction are languages and ap- 
plied mathematics. Of the value of the latter I 
have just spoken ; many who can't master mathe- 
matics often possess a singular facility for acquiring 
languages, and for these you have in India " ample 
field and verge enough." Nor can the labor be 
very great, when you hear a language spoken con- 
stantly about you. An Englishman of average 
intelligence will by residing in a German family in 
Germany soon acquire a very considerable knowl- 
edge of their language ; and the same principle of 
teaching must hold good with all languages ; when 
your servants, cab-drivers, shopmen, all places of 
public amusement, the very beggars, are your 
teachers, a man must be very dense or very care- 
less, who does not, even with but little labor, soon 



ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 49 

gain a general acquaintance with the spoken lan- 
guage, and with labor acquire a perfect command 
of it. Nor is Charles V.'s well-known saying 
about languages at all obsolete yet. 

Considering how widely our army is scattered 
over the earth's surface, and what varieties of 
scenes it meets, it is very surprising that the study 
of drawing should be so neglected as it is in the 
education of boys intended for the army. For 
drawing is not merely a most useful servant to a 
soldier, but a very amusing companion. I have 
mentioned in another letter the advantages of a 
knowledge of it, and the principles on which it 
can so easily and so truly be studied. I will only 
add now that an officer iu an ordinary marching 
regiment could, after a few years' foreign service, 
bring home a richer collection of drawings and 
paintings than any but the wealthiest traveler could 
amass : indeed it rarely happens that very wealthy 
men can spare the time which a tour in India, 
China, or Australia demands, and none but the 
wealthy can endure the expenses of so long a jour- 
ney. You get your journey-money free, and can 
get plenty of time at your disposal as well. I have 
beard also of the large London printsellers paying 

5* 



50 ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 

officers very highly for good views and spirited 
sketches in foreign parts ; but, independent of the 
money question, you will find yourself amply re- 
paid for your labor by a port-folio of the pleasant- 
est souvenirs one can bring back from distant 
lands. 

It is a mere truism to add that a correct eye and 
a clever hand for draughtraanship have many a 
time pointed out a young officer to his general for 
employment and promotion, and that few claims are 
better established. Let me, however, add this warn- 
ing, based on complaints I have heard made by 
commanding officers, that a showy and superficial 
sketch is always worthless and often mischievous ; 
it is the report of a scout who forgets a good deal 
of his intelligence and exaggerates the rest. You 
can't be too accurate in your drawing. This com- 
plaint of the inaccuracy of young officers' drawings 
is due no doubt to the shallow system on which 
drawing is generally taught. Once master Ruskin's 
" stone out of the road," get its shape exactly, mark 
all its spots correctly, round all its little projections, 
and sink all its concavities rigidly, and after prac- 
tice of this nature you need not fear the imputation 
of making a picture equally pretty and valueless. 



ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 51 

So all-important indeed is accuracy in military mat- 
ters, that photography will eventually supplant most 
hand-drawing on the field, wherever it is possible to 
get a small camera, which is almost everywhere ; 
and if you can acquire half the skill in the use of 
the camera that many amateurs now possess, you 
will find there another great resource of personal 
amusement and professional utility. 

I remember going a good many years ago to see 
a traveling circus in company with a young sur- 
geon. We saw the usual exhibition of well-trained 
horses and men displaying an almost incredible 
activity and suppleness of body. "Ah I shouldn't I 
like to have the dissecting of one of those fellows !" 
was the rather sanguinary remark of my companion. 
Yery professional, you will think, but very natural : 
to the rest of us the show had been one of skill and 
dexterity ; while he had seen nerves strained and 
muscles elastic to their uttermost far below the 
mere surface, to which our unscientific view was 
limited. 

This I believe is the spirit in which an oflBcer 
determined to thoroughly master his profession 
views every place he sees. Many spots will awake 
a twofold interest, that of past military history as 



52 ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 

well as of future military contingencies. In Canada 
and India, our two most important military occupa- 
tions, there is hardly a place of note that is not 
sacred ground to a true soldier. Whatever we hold 
in either we have fought and fought well for : our 
supremacy in both countries has more than once 
trembled in the balance ; and in considering the 
history of that supremacy do not for a moment esti- 
mate a commander by the size of the array he com- 
mands. The Walcheren expedition consisted of 
40,000 men, it was conducted with infatuated stu- 
pidity and ended in humiliating discomfiture ; while 
Wolfe carried the heights of Abraham with 3600 
men : with 1000 English and 2000 sepoys Clive 
scattered 50,000 of the enemy at Plassy to the 
winds ; while Moore — greater than either — turned 
at bay, and conquered with less than 16,000 men, 
exhausted with weeks of forced marches over bad 
roads, with scanty food and in miserable weather, 
dispirited with the consciousness of retreat, but in- ■ 
flexibly supported by the loyal belief that their 
general's ability was equal to any emergency. The 
sequel of this glorious story proved how truly sol- 
diers can gauge the merits of their commanders, 
and that no combination of untoward circumstances 



♦ ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 53 

can crush British soldiers led by a general they can 
trust. 

There is, as I said, a double interest to the sol- 
dier in travel, arising from the sight of places im- 
mortalized by his comrades' victories, and attractive 
from the interest they excite as places of military 
importance. Charles Napier could not, when travel- 
ing through the Continent, visit Geneva without 
estimating the value of the Swiss militia ; or walk 
up the Simplon without observing the gentleness of 
the gradient ; or survey Milnn without commenting, 
like a soldier, on the Austrian military arrange- 
ments, and like a statesman on the injustice and 
unnaturalness of their position. In fact, the ad- 
vantages that you possess in combining foreign 
travel with private study are simply incredible. No 
good historian will nowadays think of describing a 
battle or a siege, or any great military operation, 
without first visiting the ground. Macaulay noto- 
riously did so. But there are many scenes that no 
civilian historian could visit. How can an ordinary 
student visit Assaye, Seringapatam, or Bhurtpoor? 
You have every advantage in this respect ; don't 
neglect them. Add to this the fact that the man 
who studies a battle carefully from the best sources 



54 ON ENTERING THE ARMY. * 

of information may know its events more correctly 
than officers who were actually present, being 
limited (as a man must necessarily be) to one part 
of the field at a time, and, if a regimental officer, 
to one part of the field altogether. This rather 
improbable fact is curiously proved by an anecdote 
in the life of the great German historian Niebuhr: 
he was one day discussing with some friends the 
details of the great defeat of the Prussians at Jena; 
the battle, you will recollect, which laid Prussia at 
the feet of the French Emperor. Two officers were 
present who had been engaged in different parts of 
the field ; both flatly contradicted the historian as 
regards some movement which he asserted had 
taken place at a certain time ; a statement based, 
if I remember right, upon the formation of the 
ground on the field. Splendid as was Niebuhr's 
historical knowledge, his geographical was more 
marvelous still, and both were here called into 
court at once. An arbiter must be appointed. 
Would the disputants submit to the decision of the 
military archives at the Berlin war-office? The 
officers — how could they otherwise? — consented 
most readily. Notes v/ere made by third parties 
of the points in dispute, the Prussian records of 



ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 55 

the battle consulted, and their evidence was deci- 
sive in favor of the historian. The officers had 
viewed the scene with eyesight limited in scope 
and half-blinded with the smoke of musketry and 
artillery. The historian surveyed the field with all 
the aid that could be supplied by many eye-wit- 
nesses of the struggle at various points, by general 
orders, dispatches, adjutant-generals' and quarter- 
master-generals' returns ; in a word, he had amassed 
that knowledge for his own personal information, 
which you will I trust amass of many a great battle 
to enable you to become a first-rate officer. 

I have spoken mostly hitherto of the knowledge 
to be gained from books. As my evidence on books 
may appear partial, hear what an old officer. Sir C. 
Napier, writes to a young officer — the warrior of 
forty-five years' hard service to an ensign : " Whe- 
ther a regiment be in good or bad order, it ought 
not to affect a young man of sense, because by 
reading prof essional books you will discover what 
is faulty in your corps, if faults there are ; you will 
then learn how things ought to be, and will by 
daily observation see how they are. Thus you can 
form your comparisons, which will in time teach 
you your profession. I hope your regiment is in 



56 ON ENTERING THE ARMY. 

good order ; but if not, take care that your com- 
pany or section is, when you are intrusted with one. 
Keep up all knowledge that you have gained, and 
gain as much more as you can. By reading, you 
will be distinguished ; without it, abilities are of 
little use. A man may talk and write, but he can- 
not learn his profession without constant study to 
prepare, especially for the higher ranks, because 
he then wants the knowledge and experience of 
others improved by his own. But when in a post 
of responsibility he has no time to read; and if 
he comes to such a post with an empty skull, it is 
too late to fill it, and he makes no figure. Thus 
many people fail to distinguish themselves, and say 
they are unfortunate, which is untrue : their own 
previous idleness unfitted them to profit from for- 
tune. The smith who has to look for his hammer 
when the iron is red strikes too late : the hammer 
should be uplifted to fall like a thunderbolt while 
the white heat is in the metal. Thus will the 
forging prosper." And this, remember, is the lan- 
guage of a man as original as he was well read. 



V. 

TO A PUPIL ENTERING THE ARMr. 

HAVE written at greater length concerning 
the many lessons to be learned from books, 
because these are, from some unaccountable reason, 
so distasteful to many young men nowadays ; and 
yet think how unreasonable is your dislike. You 
would sit and listen by the hour together to the 
Duke of Wellington or the Napiers, or any great 
soldier recounting the narrative of his campaigns; 
and what else are their dispatches, or diaries, or 
biographies, but conversations or lectures? lacking 
indeed all the life of personal narration, but even 
superior in accuracy and carefulness and fullness of 
narrative. 

There is, however, a large class of subjects where 

study and experiment must go hand in hand — such 

* as chemistry, all the applied mathematics, and the 

physical sciences, and one other study of the deepest 

importance to a young officer; it is certainly a dull 

6 (57) 



58 TO A PUPIL ENTERING THE ARMY. 

one, but to every officer and soldier of the greatest 
moment, and can happily be studied, not only in 
books, but also by actual observation and experi- 
ence. I have spoken of all studies, except history, 
as more or less useful: history is no doubt essen- 
tial to an officer. You may or may not be a linguist, 
draughtsman, mechanician, chemist, or engineer. 
So much the better if you are any or all of these ; 
but remember, a judge you must be. You will 
again and again be called on to decide on questions 
affecting the liberty, the honor, and perhaps the life 
of your fellow-soldiers. Now I am sure you are 
far too kind and high principled not to wish to do 
your very best when on a court-martial ; and I am 
equally sure that the thought that you had voted 
an unjust sentence would cause you bitter regret, 
and perhaps lasting remorse. But don't think that 
kind-heartedness and high principle can teach you 
how to weigh and estimate evidence : study and 
experience will alone do that. Apropos of study 
versus good intentions, there is an amusing anec- 
dote of Simeon, the leader of the Low-Church party 
at Cambridge for many years. How a young clergy- 
man who belonged to his school came to visit him 
after a year's experience of parish-work, lamenting 



TO A PUi^IL ENTERING THE ARMY. 59 

his great deficiencies as an extempore preacher, re- 
counting what trash he uttered, if he did not break 
down altogether ; concluding his confession with 
the remark, "I suppose, sir, it is the want of faith 
that makes me so miserable a preacher ?" "Not 
in the least, my dear young friend ; justification 
comes by faith, but extempore preaching comes by 
works." 

I remember to have read somewhere a detailed 
account of the court-martial held upon Admiral 
Byng, which condemned him to death ; over whose 
remains his relations erected a monument — still 
extant — informing posterity that the government 
of that day had judicially murdered him. I well 
recollect the impression of intense remorse con- 
veyed to ray mind by the language used by more 
than one of the officers who had condemned him 
on the court-martial, and had sentenced him to 
death — not the least expecting that government 
would carry out the sentence ; but who discovered, 
when too late, to their horror and distress, that 
they must abide by their decision. Byng was to 
be sacrificed to the clamor of the mob, through the 
instrumentality of their verdict. No poet could 
load a victim with heavier burden of remorse than 



60 TO A PUPIL ENTERING THE ARMY. 

this reflection would be to any man of honor ; the 
sense of having killed a brother officer and branded 
his name and family unrighteously. 

Now, the learning, or rather the ability, to be 
acquired to enable you to form a just judgment, is 
really not very great. It has nothing whatever to 
do with the quirks and technicalities of the law : 
it is simply to learn what evidence is ; how far what 
you hear or read is trustworthy ; how far improb- 
able, when it is worthless ; also the weight of it, 
how very much is needed for a conviction even for 
a minor offense. Now, you will be almost cer- 
tainly quartered, soon after joining your depot, at 
or near an assize town. Attend the Crown Court 
regularly ; some one you know will get you, as an 
officer, a quiet and comfortable seat. Make notes 
mental, and, if you can, in pencil too, of the evi- 
dence ; and pay particular attention to every, word 
of the judge's charge to the jury, which comments 
on the evidence. He will point out where the 
evidence is contradictory — either that of one wit- 
ness with another, or one witness with himself; he 
will notice what evidence is weak and irrelevant, 
and what is convincing and conclusive ; he will 
draw the attention of the jury to the real points at 



TO A rUPIL ENTERING THE ARMY. 61 

issue — often carefully obscured by the prisoner's 
counsel (that is their duty), and to the evidence on 
which these main points turn. Thus you will get 
a series of lessons in weighing evidence from a 
man whose experience in these matters began prob- 
ably before you were born, and has continued un- 
interruptedly improving ever since. Can any rea- 
sonable man doubt that if ofiBcers thus learned how 
to value evidence — to view it apart from all extra- 
neous circumstances of what other people think, 
apart from any influence of fear or favor ; with the 
judicial calmness which characterizes our bench — 
can any man doubt that courts-martial would stand 
much higher in public estimation than they do at 
present ? 

Now, pray, don't misunderstand my exact mean- 
ing. I know that courts- martial are differently con- 
stituted, have a different, and, in some respects, sim- 
pler form of procedure to our civil courts. But the 
objects of both are identical — to get at the truth, to 
punish the guilty, and acquit the innocent; and the 
means by which you obtain the knowledge to form a 
decision upon are identical — evidence written and 
oral ; and the principles on which that evidence is 
sifted must be, and notoriously are, the same. If, 

6* 



62 TO A PUPIL ENTERING THE ARMY. 

then, a yonng man has made up his mind to enter 
the army, the sooner he attend some of the assize 
courts and listens to the evidence there given, the 
better. It cannot be right or fair to the prisoner 
that his judge should take his first lessons in juris- 
prudence in his case, however trifling a one. The 
cases may be simple that first come before a young 
officer, but the light of nature never taught any 
man yet how to meet the manoeuvres of a practiced 
liar, or discriminate between the nervousness of 
unpracticed peijury and that of an anxious tem- 
perament and natural timidity. Practice alone will 
give this power ; and if you are attentive to even 
a few criminal trials, you will be surprised to find 
how differently you begin to regard evidence ; how 
weak some appears on reflection, which at first 
seemed so convincing : how slight often a whole 
mass of evidence appears when you consider, as 
did an old lawyer more than two centuries ago, 
"that two hundred white rabbits don't make one 
white horse;" that any amount of accumulative 
evidence proving a man a mischievous demagogue 
generally, will not convict him of treason. Of all 
your studies let this be the first : to gain that knowl- 
edge, without which you cannot possibly do that 



TO A PUPIL ENTERING THE ARMY. 63 

wliich you solemnly undertake, to judge justly and 
fairly. Happily, an occasional attendance at a 
trial is regarded as an amusement rather than as 
a hardship by most educated Englishmen. 

You will see that I have exhausted a good large 
list of subjects of study all directly connected with 
your profession. There are other pursuits which 
you will liave ample opportunities of following up, 
which will not only supply both pleasure and in- 
terest at the time, but add considerably to our gen- 
eral stock of knowledge. The immense advance 
made of late years in the studies of geology, min- 
eralogy, and meteorology, is due, in great measure, 
to amateur students. Discovery paid and organ- 
ized by government is always an after-thought. 
You may, with three simple instruments — the ther- 
mometer, the barometer, and the rain-gauge — add 
no insignificant item to the general knowledge of 
the laws of climate. With a hammer and only as 
much book-knowledge as a small hand-book will 
supply, you may, in distant countries, materially 
increase our daily enlarging stores of geological 
knowledge. Indeed, you may, when abroad, ad- 
vance these sciences far more efficiently than much 
abler men can do at home. Chemistry and the 



64 TO A PUPIL ENTERING THE ARMY. 

mathematics may, speaking generally, be studied 
in any civilized place; but these studies must be, in 
the main, local ; and it is seldom, in the history of 
scientific discovery, that a Humboldt can devote 
whole years to travel, while an English soldier 
must travel far and wide. Natural history, too, 
you may well advance both by rod and gun. Only 
lately we have been told that M. Agassiz has dis- 
covered already hundreds of fishes, hitherto un- 
known, in the Amazon alone. Englishmen are 
widely famous for the energy and pluck they show 
in hunting wild animals, and many a poor Hindoo 
villager blesses the day when first a party of Eng- 
lish officers pitched their tents near, and slew their 
dreaded tigers. This same hunting expedition 
might enrich a private natural-history collection 
at home, or add valuable specimens to your local 
museum, or even supply a deficiency in the already 
overladen shelves of our great national collection. 
A man must have some employment in the army 
over and above his profession. Happily English- 
men have too superabundant energies to spend 
hours making and smoking cigarettes, as a Span- 
ish gentleman will do. There is this further argu- 
ment ,to encourage you to take up some study ; 



TO A PUPIL ENTERING THE ARMY. G5 

that if you don't, you are sure to take up with 
some mischievous amusement, or learn to idle and 
fritter away your time in a manner unworthy of 
any reasonable man. You know how constantly 
men have to leave the array from debt contracted 
entirely out of idleness and a silly recklessness 
either in gambling or horse-racing. Our gardens 
will grow something : put in good seed, work and 
cultivate them, and you will have a plentiful re- 
turn ; neglect them, and they won't remain passive, 
growing neither good nor evil; it only depends 
upon the nature of the soil what sort of weeds 
will flourish there : therefore, don't give them a 
chance ; fill up the ground — every inch of it — 
with whatever suits your turn of mind : first giv- 
ing place to those studies which I have tried to 
show you it is your absolute duty to prosecute, and 
which alone can fit you for the higher ranks of the 
honorable profession you have chosen. 

To sum up, then, in few words, my previous ar- 
guments : you have, in the vast extent of the 
British territories, a wider range for general ob- 
servation than any members of any other profes- 
sion can have. You have, from the nature of your 
duties, an immense amount of time at your dis- 



66 TO A PUPIL ENTERING THE ARMY. 

posal ; you are sure to misuse that time if you don't 
employ it well — there is no middle path. You have 
chosen a profession where the minimum of knowledge 
required by regulation is small ; but that required to 
make a man a good officer is really considerable, and 
therefore you are bound in honor to acquire that 
knowledge. These studies are both interesting 
and very unrestricted, giving you so free an option 
that it is impossible that you should not have a 
taste for some. And, finally, your very amusement 
and observations in foreign countries may be of 
the greatest service toward increasing the general 
stock of human knowledge, to which it is equally 
a pleasure and an honor to add, inasmuch as the 
experience of history teaches with unvarying uni- 
formity that whatever adds to the knowledge adds 
to the happiness and the security of our race. We 
were born to be the lords of created nature ; only 
ignorant nations are its slaves ; but this supremacy 
is only to be won and maintained by studying the 
laws of nature, by ever accumulating fresh stores 
of knowledge : and none have a grander or richer 
field to work than those whose duties call them to 
brave every climate, and watch over the interests 
of our fellow-subjects in every quarter of our globe. 



VI. 

AN OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF C. J. NAPIEE. 

TN the toughest and bloodiest of all his many 
-^ battles, "the day he overcame the Nervii," 
Ca3sar tells us how he was completely surprised by 
the enemy, and forced into a general engagement 
without having made the slightest preparation to 
meet the danger. Of his troops, some were at 
work with mattock, spade, and axe — true Roman 
weapons as much as spear or sword — fortifying the 
camp; some were scattered farther a-field looking 
for materials for the chevaux-de-frise for the ram- 
part; some had not yet arrived on the field; no 
scarlet flag, the signal for battle, was displayed, no 
bugle-calls sounded, no speech made to the soldiers, 
no watchword passed ; — and the imperial historian 
adds, so short was the interval, and so rapid the 
enemy's assault, that most of this was left undone. 
Then what in the world saved his army from being 
doubled up, crushed, and swept into space by the 

(C7) 



68 . THE LIFE OF 0. J NAPIER. 

most ferocious and resolute of all the Gallic tribes ? 
Let Cesar's own words reply; none can be terser 
or more to the point : "his difficultatibus du^ res 
erant subsidio, scientia atque usus militum." The 
two things which saved them were the soldiers' 
scientific and practical knowledge of war; they un 
derstood the theory, and had already tested it in 
practice; they brought both to bear upon the 
crisis, and converted imminent ruin into a decisive 
victory. 

" Scientia atque usus " — there lies the key to all 
success in every profession ; in the army remark- 
ably so. And I now propose to give you a sketch 
of the life of a soldier, whose brilliant career was, 
by his own admission — his own boast rather — dpe 
to the honorable and persevering study of the art 
of war, and of all other branches of knowledge 
that would throw any light upon the main study of 
his life. 

And let me not be mistaken. I do not hold up 
Charles James Napier as a pattern man, or even 
as a perfect soldier : a soldier in a constitutional 
country at least ought to possess more self-control, 
to show -less contempt for the foolish opinions of 
those by whom he is surrounded and by whom he 



THE LIFE OF C. J. NAPIER. 69 

will, if he gives offense, be surely thwarted ; he 

must be less credulous, and far more pliant than 

this gallant officer ever was. Like the great hero 
of the Greeks, he too was 

"Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer;" 
Bold, passionate, unbending, vehement ; 

like him, too, 

"Jura neget sibi nata, nihil non arroget armis." 

He would recklessly disdain the "ignominious 
tyrants " of the East, and be anxious to fight a 
duel with any one who criticised his conduct. But 
all this only made his seat a more difficult one to 
retain ; his brilliant campaigns and wonderfully 
successful rule only shine more successfully out of 
clouds which would have totally eclipsed the light 
of any mind less vigorous or talented. Avoid his 
errors, if you can ; the ardent pursuit of his pro- 
fession you certainly can imitate, for the acqui- 
sition of knowledge demands only industry and 
zeal. 

You can hardly start in your profession with less 
knowledge than the Napiers possessed. It is cer- 
tain that Williams, the great historian, the only 
military author of repute since Raleigh, could not 

7 



YO THE LIFE OF C. J. NAPIER. 

spell when he joined the army. Charles had not 
apparently had much education, but he had what 
is worth cart loads of knowledge compulsorily at- 
tained — namely, zeal ; the knowledge was sure to 
follow. 

In some respects, no doubt, Charles Napier pos- 
sessed a few singular advantages ; but we must 
never forget how heavily these were counterbal- 
anced by the many enmities he managed, justly or 
unjustly, to collect around him in his official life. 
The outline of his early military career runs thus : 
gazetted at seventeen, he had eight years of unin- 
terrupted peace before war broke out, the terrible 
Peninsular war — four of the bloodiest years of 
which he served through ; then a short interval of 
peace; then a brief campaign on the American 
coast, followed by six years of unbroken peace and 
study, until he was appointed to his post in the 
Ionian Islands, at the age of thirty- seven. Thrice 
again in his life he appears in a public capacity, 
and on each occasion with acknowledged success 
and honorable distinction: as Commandant of the 
Northern Military Division in England, during 
the Chartist movements ; as Governor in Scinde ; 
and as Commander-in-Chief in India. 



THE LIFE OF C. J. NAPIER. 11 

Now, you will observe that during the earlier 
years of his military career, years during which 
the character is formed, and the attainments ac- 
quired for life — say from seventeen, when he 
joined, to thirty-seven, when he received his first 
great command, — out of these twenty years about 
five were spent in active warfare. What became 
of the other fifteen ? 

Consummate as no doubt were his natural 
talents for war, great as was the military knowl- 
edge — the scientia atque usus — he gained under 
so accomplished a king of men as Sir John Moore, 
it is not merely this military skill that astonishes 
a reader of his biography; it is his vast acquaint- 
ance with a hundred other branches of knowledge, 
— civil engineering, political organization, insight 
into the political as well as the social characteristics 
of savage clans, sound and enlarged views on -the 
subject of trade, a prescient judgment of its future 
course, civil government in all its branches and in 
every detail. Now none of this knowledge comes 
by nature ; the fifteen years of peace which elapsed 
between the ages of seventeen and thirty-seven 
will, if examined, tell us very accurately whence 
all this varied information and rich experience 



Y2 THE LIFE OF C. J. NAPIER. 

came ; he carried with him the wide experience of 
the best men who had gone before him, and arrived 
at each post to which he was summoned a practical 
administrator, requiring only to see and hear the 
data in each separate case. And while others 
would be racking empty brains for heaven-sent 
ideas, he solved the various problems of government 
or command by the application of principles with 
which he had long been familiar. In fact, it was 
with him individually what was the case with Sir 
John Moore's famous Light Division collectively: 
they were acknowledged as veterans the first day 
they went into battle in Spain ; so trained were 
they by constant practice — so inured to the strict- 
est discipline — that whatever disasters befell other 
regiments, they seemed by some fatality exempt 
from all; and in the famous march to Corunna, 
though they covered the retreat, they lost less men 
than other regiments who had only to march with- 
out fighting. But Corunna was won at the camp 
at Shorncliffe, and Charles Napier's victories on 
the field; and success in government was equally 
won in his study, years before he held any higher 
command than that of a regiment. 

Of his studies previous to the outbreak of the 



THE LIFE OF C. J. NAPIER. TS 



» 



Peninsular war we have not the full detail that we 
have of the later ones ; but one short notice of 
what he was at the age of twenty-four will account 
for much of his future success, "Amid these men" 
(the officers of the famous Light Division) "Charles 
Napier's strong character was soon noticed. No- 
thing drew him from his study ; he never gambled, 
drank no wine, had but few intimates, was mostly 
absorbed in thought, and though ready for good- 
fellowship in all manly games, eschewed it in the 
mess-room." It was now, if ever, that he enjoyed 
any of those "peculiar advantages" which idleness 
generally ascribes to those who have risen, and ex- 
cuses itself by the absence of the same. The pecu- 
liar advantages of Napier's life were these two, 
shared in common with many gallant men at that 
time ; the first of which may perhaps not be re- 
garded as peculiarly advantageous by some young 
officers of to-day: firstly, his strict training in every 
branch of military duty under Sir John Moore at 
Shorncliflfe ; and, secondly, the opportunity of test- 
ing this discipline and skill in the fiery furnace of 
war for the four next eventful years of life. 

That he was already, at the age of twenty-seven, 
no mean critic of large military operations, his 



74 THE LIFE OE C. J. NAPIER. 

* 

strictures upon the Talavera campaign will prove : 
the justice of which the duke admitted in after- 
years; the excuse being that he was deceived by- 
false information, and was compelled to advance 
on political grounds alone. 

At the age of thirty-one I^apier found himself in 
this position ; he had seen fourteen years' service, 
had been terribly wounded, engaged in four great 
battles, served also actively on the American coast, 
risen by hard work alone through every grade up 
to lieutenant-colonel; and was now, by the sudden 
arrival of peace, reduced to half pay — peace which 
gave every promise of being lasting, and which did 
last for the next forty years in Europe, broken only 
by the brief and sudden tempest of the one hundred 
days. But Napier had made the army his profes- 
sion ; and just when those who had not so made 
it would have given up in despair, he recommenced 
those studies which made him, a quarter of a cen- 
tury later, the foremost soldier of his time. 

"Nil actum reputans dum quid superesset agendum," 

seems to have been his motto at this time ; and he 
sowed the seed from which he reaped, so many 
years later, so abundant a harvest. 



THE LIFE OF C. J. NAPIEK. 75 

As to what those studies consisted in, let the 
heading of one chapter in his biography speak for 
itself. I copy it word for word: "Exchange to 
the 50th Regiment — Military College — Notes — 
War — Conquest — Alexander the Great — Hannibal 
— Order of Battle — Cavalry — Booty — Horses — 
Armor — Command — Soldiers' Marriages — Dress 
— Baggage — Freedom — Rienzi — Languages — 
Lawyers — Nations — Strange Dreams — Epigrams." 
And, later still, we read in his life that at the age 
of thirty-four, "war was'over, he was still on half 
pay, and his future was unpromising ; yet his note- 
book shows that general literature, commerce, agri- 
culture, civil engineering, and building — especially 
structures for the poor — political economy, and in- 
ternational law, were subjects of study as well as 
war and government." 

It might be supposed that in so large a range of 
reading, of subjects so various and so dissimilar, 
details would be neglected necessarily: but you 
will find very noticeable instances of the closest at- 
tention to very minute details, such as the compu- 
tation of saving a thousand horses in any army of 
fifty regiments, by copying the French model and 
having the oflBcer's personal baggage carried 



76 THE LIFE OF C. J. NAPIER. 

among the men of his own company — one man 
carrying shirts, another socks, etc. And yet this 
close examination of details is consistent with the 
clearest and widest generalization, as when he 
says, "If ever I command a cavalry regiment, I 
will never lose sight of three things — rigid disci- 
pline for the body, fencing for the individual, a 
light load for the horse." This note he wrote at 
Bermuda at the age of thirty-one ; and this was 
the forging of the bolt : the bolt was launched 
with deadly effect against some of our most mis- 
chievous enemies in Scinde thirty years later, 
" when he organized and taught the famous Scinde 
Light Horse, whose excellence became prover- 
bial." 

There are, too, and there must ever be, times in 
the life of a commanding officer when he will be 
called upon to act, and that promptly and with de- 
cision, and in cases too which may severely test his 
judgment, and demand the exercise of much tact 
and discretion. Now, these difficulties are just the 
points in life on which distinction or extinction 
hinge; no wise man will wait for their arrival; 
most of them, all perhaps, may be forestalled, and 
the mind may be so habituated to the examina- 



THE LIFE OF C. J. NAPIER. t7 

tion of a few main principles, that all circucn- 
stances, however apparently various, must fall with- 
in the scope of one of them. If you have never 
studied the mainsprings of character, you must 
clearly be unequal to decide upon questions de- 
manding that knowledge for their solution ; if you 
have, for instance, decided, with Charles Napier, 
that "change in itself is bad," you will avoid a 
common error of men in office, the issuing of fre- 
quent orders; and as you issue but few, you will 
value them the more highly, and enforce them rig- 
idly ; you will be astonished, when you think it 
over, to find how large an area a few main princi- 
ples cover — not merely in your own, but in every 
profession in life. The three alone that Napier 
dwells upon, in the note headed "commanding- 
officer," would avoid a thousand blunders: first, 
issue few orders ; second, see that every one you 
issue is exactly obeyed, letter and spirit; third, 
avoid the habit of scolding, — punish severely, if 
necessary, but don't scold. Now, what I want 
particularly to bring before you is the fact, that 
the acquisition of these principles of conduct is 
no less the fruit of study and quiet thought, than 
a knowledge of strategy, or a profound acquaint- 
ance with military history. 



78 THE LIFE OF C. J. NAPIER. 

This was how the fifteen years of peace were 
passed ; and let his four commands testify to the 
harvest he reaped from them. Witness in Cepha- 
lonia, roads carried along precipices and over 
chasms, new harbors projected, liglit-houses raised, 
public buildings erected, the mischievous old feudal 
authority crushed, reforms carried out in every de- 
partment, and the revenue largely increased. Wit- 
ness in the Northern military district of England, 
his wise and humane dealing with the misguided 
men who sought to gain by civil war what is fairly 
attainable by honest political agitation ; his invit- 
ing some of the Chartist leaders to the barracks, 
and showing them the manoeuvres of a battery of 
horse-artillery, upon which they returned sadder 
and wiser men — advising moral and not physical 
force chartism for the future. Witness in Scinde 
his two great victories against some of the bravest 
warriors in India, with odds of about fifteen to 
one against him ; his just and generous government 
of the conquered nations; the records of his active 
brain and far-reaching hand everywhere — baggage 
and camel corps organized ; principles readily 
adopted with masterly versatility to meet the exi- 
gencies of climate or character ; witness the pres- 



THE LIFE OF C. J. NAPIER. 19 

ent mercantile greatness of Kurrachee, his favorite 
child, and the growing traffic on the Indus, his pro- 
phecy of twenty-five years ago ; his perfectly unique 
campaign against the robbers of the Cutchee hills: 
his vast engineering plans for irrigation and recov- 
ery of land from the flooding of the Indus; in a 
word, a large country recovered from the misrule of 
the basest and most degraded tyrants, and brought 
into a state of quiet contentment and industry — 
the spade superseding the sword, the robber con- 
verted into the laborer. 

But this is but a crude, bare, and most imper- 
fect outline of this great soldier's career : the whole 
picture is well worth a very careful study ; but as 
you study it, remember where its successes were 
really won ; where the foundation was laid on which 
could be raised so brilliant a superstructure ; how 
it was that an old soldier was found to be an ac- 
complished administrator and successful governor. 
The secret of the mystery lay in the spell, so sim- 
ple indeed, but to so many so distasteful, expressed 
by the old poet in the words, "labor omnia vincit 
improbus," or in the Christian motto of ''qui la- 
borat orat." Nor was this amassing of knowledge 
upon many topics valuable only in a purely scien- 



80 THE LIFE OF C. J. NAPIER. 

tific view o.f the military life ; his meditations upon 
character, and the various methods by which varie- 
ties of character are to be addressed and won, are 
well exemplified in his life. It is generally noticed 
that characters such as his, fearless and impetuous, 
are generous and forgiving ; but they don't often 
display such genial tact and thoughtfulness as are 
expressed in that famous letter, in vol. ii. p. 445, 
to an officer on neglect of duty — a neglect covered 
by a false pretense of conscientiousness ; or such 
humorous kindliness as beams through every word 
of his letter to a private soldier, in vol. iii. p. 43, 
where he recommends petitioner to promotion, if 
he is, as he says he is, a remarkably sober man — 
and signs himself "Charles Napier, Major-General 
and Governor of Scinde, because I have always 
been a remarkably sober man." No one will won- 
der, after reading these and many letters and other 
documents of a similar character, at the passionate 
love felt for him by privates and officers alike ; at 
such hearty enthusiasm as was well expressed by a 
young officer (vol. iii. p. 346) : " When I see that 
old man on his horse, how can I be idle, who am 
young and strong ? By God, I would go into a 
loaded cannon's mouth if he ordered me !" No 



THE LIFE OF C. J. NAPIER. 81 

wonder that a campaign pronounced impossible 
should succeed gloriously, when, after taking every 
precaution, and making every preparation, a gen- 
eral could act so decisively on principles based on 
a profound acquaintance with character as Napier 
does (vol. iii. p. 218) ; an argument, be it observed, 
not merely logically irrefragable, but shortly proved 
conclusive by the still more irrefragable logic "of 
facts," the unconditional submission of hill-tribes, 
which had set at nought all conquerors — from the 
great Iskander downward — who from their rocky 
fastnesses had laughed at the helpless attempts of 
great generals for certainly two thousand years. 

It is easy enough to despise display and de- 
nounce luxury when neither your means nor your 
position will support or sanction either ; it would 
be natural for a private soldier to declaim against 
the flagrant injustice of a court-martial which 
would break a private and honorably acquit an 
officer on charges of drunkenness equally proved 
in either case; an Indian officer naturally prized 
the long services and discipline of the native sepoy ; 
and educated and highly-refined civilians have borne 
witness to the courteous manners of a Hindoo gen- 
tleman ; a subaltern, smarting beneath his severity 

8 



82 THE LIFE OF C. J. NAPIER. 

will not unreasonably denounce a Martinet; but it 
demands a rare combination of gifts — some natu- 
ral, more acquired by study and thought — to be 
equal to all these various influences. A man must 
have large sympathies who could write and act as 
ISTapier wrote and acted, when a general officer iri 
high command, on these and many more kindred 
topics or occasions. And remember kindliness 
alone will not create sympathy, any more than a 
good intention will complete a good action : for 
the latter you need also perseverance ; for the for- 
mer knowledge of the position and circumstances 
of the person with whom you sympathize. Shak- 
speare, with his world-wide sympathies, did not 
create his hundreds of undying characters but by 
keen observation and incessant thought. 

I am told that this life of Napier is much more 
read among young officers than it was a few years 
ago. No one who has the well-being of the Eng- 
lish army at heart but would heartily rejoice if such 
is the case ; it is only by some such example that 
the mischief will be met, so clearly foreseen long 
ago by ISTapier himself, — the mischief which must 
ensue when the officers think little of duty except 
as an inevitable bore, and value amusement as of 



THE LIFE OF C. J. NAPIER. 83 

all importance, and imagine that to belong to a 
fast regiment is the thing ; i.e. "a regiment unfit 
for service, commanded by an adjutant, and having 
a mess in debt ; while, on the other hand, the pri- 
vate soldier goes daily to school or to his library — 
how always at hand — and thus daily acquires 
knowledge, while his dignified officer goes to the 
billiard-room or the smoking-room." 

' If what I have now written should induce you 
to read, — no, not read, but study, note, digest 
Charles Napier's life, — it will be some reward for 
the little trouble this outline has cost me ; for be 
sure of this, that after his worst enemies or warm- 
est friends have "nothing exaggerated, nor set 
down aught in malice" about his character, he was 
a man, and emphatically a soldier, "take him for all 
in all, we shall not look upon his like again." 



VI L 

HOW IS ONE TO WRITE AN ESSAY? 

TT is singular that so much difficulty is made 
-*- about Euglish composition, considering that 
the material you have to work in is the language 
you have known from your cradle ; and it is almost 
more singular that you should assert your difficul- 
ties to be increased by the fact of your never hav- 
ing written an essay at school in your life. Now, 
you have done original Latin prose composition for 
years ; at some schools not a week passes without 
your having to send in a theme — that is to say, an 
essay on some given subject ; and as the principles 
of composition in all languages are identical — as 
language is but the flesh which enfolds the same 
skeleton in all cases — I do not understand why you 
find this difficulty that you complain about so de- 
spairingly. 

Now composition, as its name implies, is simply 
to compono ; to arrange your subject in intelligible 
(84) 



HOW IS ONE TO WRITE AN ESSAY? 85 

form ; to marshal your troops as an army, instead 
of getting them clubbed — as not a few writers do — 
as a mob. That remarkable genius for organiza- 
tion which the French display equally in all depart- 
ments of the government, and in arranging an 
emeute to overturn the government when perfectly 
organized, they display equally in all, and especi- 
ally in their periodical literature. An article in the 
Revue des deux Mondes, for instance, is quite a 
lesson in literary organization to many of our 
writers; from first to last the writer never lets you 
lose sight of the main object of his writing ; even 
if forced by circumstances into an occasional di- 
gression, he will be sure to keep you always in 
sight of the port you are steering for, and to land 
you safely there at last. 

Now, there are three indispensable requisites for 
writing on any subject in any language : 1st, a fair 
knowledge of the resources of the language you are 
about to employ; this I will discuss in a future 
letter, assuming now that you know enough of your 
own language to express your ideas fluently and 
correctly in it : 2dly, a knowledge of the subject 
given you for your essay : 3dly, a lucid arrange- 

8* 



86 HOW IS ONE TO WRITE AN ESSAY? 

ment of the ideas you have formed on your subject, 
which latter is technically termed composition. 

One great — perhaps the greatest — cause of fail- 
ure is the absence of the second requisite. A man's 
innate sense or taste will, in many cases, supply a 
deficiency of formal knowledge of the third requi- 
site ; if a man is naturally clear-headed, he won't 
talk or write confusedly; but no amount of mother- 
wit can supply ideas on subjects about which you 
have never thought or read, or (what is often most 
useful) conversed ; you are like the Israelites turned 
out into the fields brick-making without that most 
important item, the straw. 

1^0 w, all the innumerable subjects that can be 
proposed for an essay are contained in one of two 
classes : they are either simple or compound. Under 
the first are reckoned such subjects as "the Feudal 
System," " Commerce," the name of a place, e.g. 
London, Gibraltar : oh such subjects you will write 
historically or descriptively, rather than argumenta- 
tively. In the second are placed such subjects as 
*' Slavery, the curse of the country that maintains 
it," "The power of public opinion is irresistible:" 
these must be treated argumentatively. Now, what- 
ever be the subject, it is clear that you can't draw 



HOW IS ONE TO WRITE AN ESSAY? 87 

water from an empty well ; and if you have never 
discussed or read and thought about slavery, and 
are suddenly set down to a desk, with however 
ample a provision of writing materials, you will be 
totally helpless and incapable of either treating it 
historically and generally, or investigating the 
causes which make it an equal curse to master and 
slave alike. In a word, here too, as happily every- 
where, you will find that only industry and mental 
activity can supply you with the requisite materials ; 
you have not yet got so far as your scaffolding; 
you have not yet collected your bricks and mortar, 
and timber and slates ; and, as in actual building, 
industry alone must apply them. When we come 
to the scaffolding question, then skill and judgment 
are required, but as yet industry alone for collect- 
ing the materials. 

These materials can be drawn only from two 
sources — reading and conversation : and by read- 
ing I don't mean merely the reading of books — 
though, if you want to gain a full insight into any 
subject, you must have recourse to them — but 
rather reading, or, still better, if you have the op- 
portunity, listening to good lectures on any subject 
that interests you ; and better still, hearing a full 



88 HOW IS ONE TO WRITE AN ESSAY? 

and warm debate in the Houses of Parliament upon 
some question of policy : then you will hear both 
sides of the question, and your judgment will be 
called more actively into play, as well as your at- 
tention. Spirited conversation, too, is a capital 
field for instruction, in which you are either a list- 
ener or a combatant ; there, too, you see a question 
well sifted, with less formality, and therefore less 
mental effort than is demanded for a ''debate in 
the House." 

Supposing, then, that your materials are col- 
lected well in hand for immediate use, your next 
step is to set up your scaffolding — that is to say, 
to write out the heads of what you intend to say, 
all arranged exactly in the order in which you in- 
tend them to come in your composition. 

But example is better than precept. I will show 
you how a master in composition wrote a treatise 
or essay on " Old Age," which the opinion of many 
generations has pronounced a master-piece ; an 
essay so perfect in its composition that you never 
for a moment lose the thread of the argument — so 
clear in illustration, that each page convinces you 
more fully of the invincibility of the writer's posi- 
tion — expressed in language so choice and refined, 



HOW IS ONE TO WRITE AN ESSAY? 89 

that had his other works been lost, the charm of 
this alone would place its author among the first 
of the greatest of Latin writers. I shall gladly 
welcome the opportunity, too, at the same time, of 
showing you that the principles of composition are 
absolutely identical in all good writers, whatever 
material they may happen to have worked in. 

Now, the point of view from which Cicero ap- 
proaches his subject is to examine the charges 
usually brought against old age, and to refute them 
each in order. I shall refer to the chapters for 
convenience, though of course they were not speci- 
fied by Cicero, though they follow accurately his 
own divisions of the subject. The first chapter, 
then, is what we should call the dedication and 
preface : he dedicates the essay to his friend At- 
ticus ; gives his reasons for writing at all on the 
subject, and also for composing it in the form of a 
dialogue ; the subject is introduced from chapters 
ii. to v., where Scipio and Laelius are represented 
eliciting from the old Cato his sentiments on the 
subject of old age, who fortifies his position with 
respect to the usefulness of old age by copious 
references to the experiences of men he had known 
of the past generation, and by quoting examples 
drawn from other countries besides his own. 



90 HOW IS ONE TO WRITE AN ESSAY? 

Thus the subject is fairly laid open before the 
reader ; then the author distinctly informs you the 
heads under which the subject will be discussed, and 
the order in which they come. Cato tells us he will 
reply to each of the four charges in turn ; and they 
are these : firstly, its removing us from active life ; 
secondly, its weakening the natural powers ; thirdly, 
its depriving us of almost all our pleasures ; and, 
fourthly, its close vicinity to death. The first point 
he discusses in chapters vi. vii. and viii. In reply 
to the first charge, the writer represents Cato as 
holding to the "irresistible logic of facts," and 
quoting many an instance from their own history 
of the valuable services conferred upon the state by 
the wisdom of the old men in council ; and indeed 
maintains truly enough that the prudence and care- 
fulness of age is needed in the commonweal to 
counterbalance the recklessness and impetuosity of 
youth : this he rightly considers so demonstrable 
from reason and their own history, that he dwells 
the less on the subject, and passes on quickly to the 
second point, which is examined in chapters ix. x. 
and xi. The gist of old Cato's argument is this : 
you say the natural powers are abated by old age ; 
granted, if you mean a man's physical strength ; 



HOW IS ONE TO WRITE AN ESSAY? 91 

but if you mean his mental faculties, I deny it alto- 
gether. And again he illustrates his point by many 
felicitous anecdotes drawn from his vast stores of 
historical knowledge, and by his own example ; he 
was himself an author at the age of eighty. The 
third division of his subject he discusses at much 
greater length — the charge against old age of de- 
priving us of almost all our pleasures: this he con- 
tinues until the end of the eighteenth chapter, and 
replies to most fully : first, by gladly admitting the 
truth of the charge, if by pleasure is meant the vio- 
lent passions of youth ; and, secondly, by denying 
the truth of it altogether, if by pleasure is meant 
the supreme delight of adding daily to one's stores 
of knowledge, of communicating that knowledge to 
others, of enjoying well-ordered society, and, most 
of all, of pursuing the study of agriculture, which 
the old Roman dwells upon with all the love that 
the most active minds of the most active-minded 
nations have ever shown for this pursuit : this leads 
the writer into a considerable digression upon the 
pleasures of farming — enlivened by some good an- 
ecdotes illustrative of the advantages of rural life 
and occupations for old age. The fourth and last 
division of his subject begins at the nineteenth 



92 HOW IS ONE TO WRITE AN ESSAY? 

chapter, and continues to the end of the book; it 
is in itself a complete and very eloquent essay on 
the question, " whether the neighborhood of death 
to old age is an evil ;" for the old, he argues, death 
is the natural conclusion of life, and he fondly dwells 
upon the recollection of the many Romans of former 
days who had rushed to meet a voluntary death at 
the hands of their enemies for their country's sake, 
and these both young and often uneducated men ; 
a weighty 'lesson, he asserts, to us, who are cer- 
tainly old, and consider ourselves well educated. 
But the real consolation in death is the hope of 
meeting the great and good in the other world ; 
and this belief he expounds in language of undy- 
ing force and beauty — in language so choice and 
powerful that, had no speeches of the great writer 
come down to us, we could have judged that his 
eloquence was of no common order from this pero- 
ration alone. 

As a summary, then, of the lesson of composi- 
tion to be drawn from this treatise, we will suppose 
that Cicero wrote out — certainly had in his mind 
before he began the actual writing — an abstract of 
it, that ran thus : Dedication to my friend Atticus 
— Introduction of subject — Dialogue — Cato chief 



HOW IS ONE TO WRITE AN ESSAY? 93 

speaker — The worth of old age — Four main charges 
to be refuted. Such would really be the first out- 
line of the subject, the first sketching-in of the 
figures in a picture. And now, to show you how 
such brief notes as these are capable of expansion 
— how some sinews are laid upon the bones before 
the flesh is completed — how some good stout scaf- 
folding is erected before you begin your bricks and 
mortar, — we will suppose the author looking over 
the first charge against old age, viz, *' that it re- 
moves a man from active life :" from outline the 
argument is thus worked up more fully : What is 
meant by active life ? Of active mental life our 
ancestors furnish innumerable examples — quote 
Ennius or Appius Claudius — illustrate by the old 
pilot at the helm — let Cato quote his own example 
of active interference in state aff'airs — Senatus de- 
rived from Senes — quote Naevius on the mischief 
wrought by the inconsiderateness of youth — exam- 
ine the charge of failure of memory — Themistocles 
and myself evidence to the contrary — no old man 
forgets what it is to his own interest to remember — 
memory a matter of industry — anecdote of Sopho- 
cles' (Edipus Coloneus — collect instances of pow- 
erful memories among the poets, the philosophers — 

9 



94 HOW IS ONE TO WRITE AN ESSAY? 

examine briefly whether the society of the old is 
disagreeable. 

This would be sufficient framework to rest his 
building operations on ; and be assured that a sys- 
tem of construction which great writers have not 
disdained, little writers must gratefully avail them- 
selves of. All the rest of Cicero's argument may 
be analyzed in the same manner; and exactly as I 
have picked to pieces before your eyes this one of 
the most perfect essays in Roman literature, so you 
may treat a good composition in any language ; 
the same rules hold good whatever is the nature of 
the composition : if you examine a speech of De- 
mosthenes, of Cicero, or of Burke, you will find 
introduction and explanation of the subject ; sec- 
ondly, a review of all the arguments that will main- 
tain their own and impugn their adversaries' posi- 
tion ; lastly, a peroration as it is called, or con- 
clusion, briefly recapitulating the previous argu- 
ments, and appealing strongly to the feelings of 
their hearers : it is to these perorations that one 
looks for the highest efforts of oratory, last im- 
pressions being always most important, the feelings 
of the speaker and his audience being ever kindled 
into mutual sympathy, and the orator conscious of 



HOW IS ONE TO WRITE AN ESSAY? 95 

the necessity of throwing himself into one last ef- 
fort for the interests of his cause. But here I am 
rather wandering into the second division of my 
subject, viz. style ;^ at present I have a little more 
to say about the structure of your essay. 

If, then, you really wish to compose well, you 
must practice yourself in making abstracts — I have 
shown you how already — first of short essays; 
take any good articles in a good weekly review, 
the Spectator or the Saturday for instance ; then 
try longer articles, such as you will find in Mac- 
millaii^s, the Fortnightly, or one of the Quarter- 
lies ; don't be afraid of not finding enough work 
in an analysis of this kind ; you will find in some 
articles much to imitate, in some as much to avoid. 
Notice, what is so difficult to a beginner at English 
composition, the commencements of good essays ; 
how the subject is ushered into society, sometimes 
by an anecdote, sometimes by a quotation, some- 
times by a simple statement of who he is ; he sends 
in, in fact, his name and business. Notice, too, in 
a really good essay, how, after the completion of 
the building, the scaffolding has been carefully 
removed, and all signs of it effaced. 

And now, I think, if you find much difficulty in 



96 HOW IS ONE TO WRITE AN ESSAY? 

composing, on a moderate scale at least, the diffi- 
culty will lie elsewhere ; where, I expect, it mostly 
lies — not in ignorance of the principles of building, 
but in want of materials wherewith to build : that 
deficiency I have already discussed, and its remedy; 
but if you read, and discuss conversationally, and 
pick up all information from every quarter, you 
will not long feel hampered by this difficulty. 
There is no royal road to this more than to any 
other branch of'learning ; if you would always be 
ready to meet your foes in war, you must keep 
your armory well filled and well furbished in time 
of peace. « 



VIII. 

ON STYLE. 

T OOK at this picture : " Flanders is subdued ; 
-^ the Ocean and the Mediterranean are re- 
united ; vast harbors are excavated ; a chain of 
fortresses encircles France ; the eolonnades of the 
Louvre are raised ; the gardens of Versailles a're 
designed ; the workmen of the Low Countries and 
Holland find themselves excelled by the new work- 
shops of France ; a rivalry in labor, in fame, in 
greatness, spreads everywhere ; a new and splen- 
did language recounts and glorifies these wonders 
for all future time. Boileau's letters are dated 
from the conquests of Louis XIV.; Racine puts 
upon the stage the weaknesses and elegancies of the 
court ; Moliere surrenders his mighty genius to the 
greatness of the throne ; La Fontaine himself ap- 
preciates the great deeds of the young king and 
becomes his flatterer. Such is the brilliant picture 
presented us by the first twenty years of this mem- 
orable reign." 

9* (9t) 



98 ON STYLE. 

Now on this : " The twilight of history first 
dawns upon us in Asia; and through all succeed- 
ing centuries, during which Africa still remained 
almost entirely sunk in profound darkness, and Eu- 
rope itself arose tardily and laboriously from out 
of the same, there hovers a light over Asia which 
shows us great revolutions, whose arena it was, 
not indeed in equal, but in ever-increasing clear- 
ness, so that we can survey its progress in every- 
thing, and thence draw general principles to un- 
lock the history of our race. The further we travel 
back into this history, the more we compare the 
Sagas of the nations one with another from their 
origin and their later accidents, and the more we 
learn withal to recognize the differences of their 
external civilization, the more we shall be always 
led back to Asia ; and the more probable does it 
appear that man has his home peculiarly there, 
however much he may have raised or degraded 
himself in other divisions of the world, under for- 
eign skies, and under the influence of favorable 
and unfavorable circumstances." 

Now, these are quotations from two books of 
prose extracts, compiled respectively by a French- 
man and a German for the tuition of their respec- 



ON STYLE. 99 

tive youth: the German book is published "by 
authority," and is the German reading-book for the 
middle classes of their higher academies : either, 
therefore, may be taken as a representative book, 
and no one who knows anything of French and 
German prose will assert that the quotations I 
have made are other than honest representatives of 
French and German style respectively. Those 
styles are at the very opposite poles of composi- 
tion ; the former delighting in sentences brief and 
perspicuous, the latter in such as are lengthy and 
laborious : indeed my extract is a very moderate 
example of the German ; easily could sentences be 
quoted of double and treble the length ; some of 
Kant's would fill an octavo page. The tendency 
of the former is no doubt to monotony and to ef- 
fects somewhat spasmodic ; that of the latter to 
confusion and hopeless obscurity: but whereas the 
tendency of the German writers to their error is a 
constant quantity, and that a very large one, that 
of the French is a comparatively trifling one. The 
French style is always lively, translucent, harmo- 
nious ; the German (with the exception of three 
or four of their great writers) is nebulous, per- 
plexed, and wearisome ; and for this reason he piles 



100 ON STYLE. 

clause on clause until the overloaded sentence sinks 
in the waters of confusion. I do not deny he writes 
fortiterin re ; his thoughts, muddy in expression, 
are original and profound ; but the vehicle he con- 
veys those thoughts in to your door I — it reminds 
one of one of his own eilwagen, such as were com- 
mon enough a few years back in unvisited parts of 
Germany, and called in bitter mockery " post-haste 
chaises," with timber enough in them to have built 
a jolly-boat, with rope-harness and jades of posters, 
the lineal descendants (probably) of the steed im- 
mortalized by Shakspeare that carried Petruchio 
to wed the Shrew. 

If, then, the first great object of style is to pre- 
sent your thoughts in an intelligible form to your 
reader or hearer, form your sentences simple and 
decisive, with few and brief clauses ; interpose 
here and there a simple sentence of only one clause 
if possible ; avoid parentheses as far as you possi- 
bly can ; if the choice lies between repetition and 
obscurity, choose the former instantly as the lesser 
fault: repetition may throw some further light 
even if it is monotonous ; obscurity is fatal, sub- 
versive of the only object of your expressing your 
ideas in language at all. 



ON STYLE. 101 

And now that we have decided that the French 
model should be chosen, and the German eschewed, 
for the framework of our sentences, I will quote an 
anecdote of De Quincey's to guide us in our choice 
of words ; and you can have no better example of 
a manly, nervous, and refined English style than 
De Quincey's. " Some eight years ago," he tells 
us, "we had occasion to look for lodgings in a 
newly-built suburb of London to the south of the 
Thames. The mistress of the house was in regular 
training, it appeared, as a student of newspapers. 
She had no children ; the newspapers were her 
children. There lay her studies; that branch of 
learning constituted her occupation from morning 
to night ; and the following were among the words 
which she — this semi-barbarian — poured from her 
cornucopia during the very few minutes of our in- 
terview; which interview was brought to an ab- 
rupt issue by mere nervous agitation upon our part. 
The words, as noted down within an hour of the 
occasion, and after allowing a fair time for our re- 
covery, were these: first, 'category;' secondly, 
'predicament;' thirdly, 'individuality;' fourthly, 
'procrastination;' fifthly, 'speaking diplomatically 
would not wish to commit herself;' sixthly, 'would 



102 ON STYLE. 

« 

spontaneously adopt the several modes of domesti- 
cation to the reciprocal interests ;' and finally (which 
word it was that settled us), seventhly, 'anteriorly;' 
concerning which word we solemnly declare and 
make aflSdavit that neither from man, woman, or 
book, had we ever heard it before this unique 
rencontre with this abominable woman on the stair- 
case. The occasion which furnished the excuse for 
such a word was this : from the staircase window 
we saw a large shed in the rear of the house ; ap- 
prehending some nuisance of ' manufacturing in- 
dustry ' in our neighborhood, ' What's that ?' we 
demanded. Mark the answer : ' A shed ; that's 
what it is : videlicet a shed ; and anteriorly to the 
existing shed there w^as — ' What there was pos- 
terity must consent to have wrapt up in darkness ; 
for there came on our nervous seizure, which inter- 
cepted further communication. But observe as a 
point which took away any gleam of consolation 
from the case, the total absence of all malaprop 
picturesqueness, that might have defeated its 
deadly action upon the nervous system. No ; it is 
due to the integrity of her disease, and to the 
completeness of our suffering, that we should at- 



ON STYLE. 103 

test the unimpeachable correctness of her words, 
and of the syntax by which she connected them." 

The style of all the better and more influential 
newspapers has no doubt improved since De 
Quincey related this humorous anecdote ; bat in 
the smaller provincial prints you will find language 
as "tall" and meaningless still; in American 
papers you will see it in its rankest luxuriance. 
Like bad taste in dress or furniture, or bad man- 
ners, it has its uses ; the same which our ancestors 
thought they extracted from the exhibition of 
gibbeted highwaymen up and down the high-roads. 
But there is a deeper truth still, besides the warn- 
ing, to be gathered from that sublime vulgarity 
"anteriorly," The sources of our noble English 
language are double ; Rome gave us one, Ger- 
many the other ; and the worthy landlady, like 
many of the "great semi-educated," drew from the 
former well in preference to the latter : these 
sources are so distinct that not merely passages 
but whole books have been almost exclusively 
composed in either of the two dialects, if I may so 
term them ; it is this double source that gives our 
language its peculiar richness and munificence. 
From the German we draw words of narrative and 



104 ON STYLE. 

simple description, from the Roman words of 
thought and passion ; from the one the language 
of childhood, from the other that of reason, the 
maturer power of manhood : our position is unique 
among the languages of Europe, probably of the 
world ; we can write in two languages at once ; 
not a word but has its synonym, many two or three, 
not that they are even exact equivalents, but suffi- 
ciently so for ordinary purposes ; and to prove to 
you this is no mere paradox, I would refer you to 
the writings of such men as John Bunyan, Swift, 
and Cobbett, for Saxon, and Jeremy Taylor and 
Johnson for Latin-English, You will find whole 
pages in either set of authors, where one has hardly 
a word of Latin origin, and the other not a word 
of Saxon, except prepositions and auxiliaries, and 
such as are unavoidable. Compare, or rather con- 
trast these two extracts ; I have purposely drawn 
them from simple narratives of journeys, one 
through Hampshire, the other through Scotland ; 
and judge for yourself how the simplicity of Saxon- 
English excels the laboriousness of the Latinized, 
wherever the latter is not demanded by the more 
complex character of the subject. 

"We got leave to go and see the grounds at 



ON STYLE. 105 

Waverley, where all the old monks' garden walls 
are totally gone, and where the spot is become a 
sort of lawn. I showed him the spot where the 
strawberry- garden was, and where I, when sent to 
gather hautboys, used to eat every remarkably fine 
one, instead of letting it go to be eaten by Sir 
Robert Rich. I showed him a tree close by the 
ruins of the abbey, from a limb of which I once 
fell into the river, in an attempt to take the nest of 
a crow, which had artfully placed it upon a branch 
so far from the trunk as not to be able to bear the 
weight of a boy eight years old. I showed him an 
old elra-tree which was hollow even then, into 
which I, when a very little boy, saw a cat go, 

which was as big as a middle-sized spaniel dog ; 

• 

for relating which I got a great scolding, for 
standing to which I at last got a beating, but 
stand to which I still did ; I have since many times 
repeated it, and I would take my oath of it to this 
day." And so for pages together of Cobbett's 
clear and simple narrative you will not find a single 
Latin intruder into his domain of uncorrupted 
English prose. And now listen respectfully to the 
language of the great critic of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. 

10 



106 ON STYLE. 

" We are now treading that illustrious island 
which was once the luminary of the Caledonian 
regions ; whence savage, clans and roving barba- 
rians derived the benefits of knowledge and the 
blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from 
all local emotion would be impossible if it were 
endeavored, and would be foolish if it were pos- 
sible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of 
our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, 
or the future predominate over the present, ad- 
vances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far 
from me and my friends be such frigid philosophy 
as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over 
any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, 
bravery, or virtue. The man is little to be envied 
whose patriotism would not gain force on the plains 
of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer 
among the ruins of lona." 

With the exception of the last sentence, the 
style of which is excellent, thanks to its simplicity, 
what pompous, labored, "tall" talk all this is! 
And yet our grandfathers thought this as magnifi- 
cent as it certainly is magniloquent ; happily 
Burns, Scott, and Byron, and Cobbett, Words- 
worth, and Southey have lived since then to re- 
deem us from such lifeless artificialities. 



ON STYLE. lOT 

As a rule, then, never use a long word when a 
short one is equally expressive ; never use a 
Latinized word when a homely Saxon one will 
suit as well. On the other hand, there is a pe- 
dantry to be avoided here too : when you get be- 
yond simple subjects and ordinary narrative into 
the higher regions of argument, or philosophy, or 
criticism, freely use the words they demand, which 
our language, above all others, is rich in: don't 
despise its wealth, but don't employ it on unsuit- 
able objects : to " narrate " a journey in Johnson's 
sesquipedalia verba is just to build a boat with 
timbers cut out for a ship. 

It is a frequent and not an unreasonable com- 
plaint, that the clergy choose their words from a 
vocabulary utterly beyond the comprehension of 
most of their hearers. If they would adopt this 
simple rule, to expunge any word of Latin birth 
out of their sermons wherever a Saxon word would 
suit, this would relieve them from half their dull- 
ness by removing all obscurity of their language 
at any rate. What think you would have been 
the fate of Bunyan's immortal book had he related 
the Pilgrim's journey in the ponderous "-osities" 
and ''-ations" of Johnson, or the gorgeous Latin- 



108 ON STYLE. 

isms of Taylor ? Would all Barns's true pathos 
and hearty humor have secured, rather I should 
say asserted, for his poems a place on every cot- 
tier's shelf, had not the language, simple, plain, 
unaffected, secured them a home in every cottier's 
memory ? And so when English preachers again 
adopt old Latimer's simple Saxon and homely 
illustrations in their sermons, they too will find, as 
he did, no lack of audience or attention. 

Adapt, therefore, your language to your subject, 
and your audience or your readers, as the case may 
be ; always erring, if err you must, on the side of 
simplicity ; just so in the composition of your sen- 
tences, marshal, as the French do, two deep, rather 
than as the Germans, ten, twenty, anything up to 
infinity ; and then too err, if err you must, on the 
side of perspicuity; fear nothing so much as the 
charge of artificial language and a cloudy style. 



IX. 

ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 

A S yet I have spoken of style only with reference 
■^^ to your audience ; now we will examine its 
principles on other grounds. At present I have 
treated it, as De Quincey has well put it, " as a 
mechanical process ; whereas style is really or- 
ganic ;" that is to say, instinct with a life and power 
of its own. Every style, if truly developed, is just 
what good music is — really the reflection of the 
composer's character, of his powers and disposi- 
tion, intellectual and moral. This you can see at 
a glance by reference to the writings and speeches 
of the best authors and orators ; their styles are 
remarkably different, and yet harmonize decidedly 
with their characters : the fervid temperament and 
impetuous pride of Chatham, the philosophic and 
cultivated mind of Burke, the calm, thoughtful, and 
judicial spirit of Hallam, are as visible in their 
works as in their biographies, and — magnis com- 

10* (109) 



110 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 

ponere parva — it is so with us all. If your dispo- 
sition is naturally quiet, amiable, and retiring, you 
may write as elegantly as Gray ; but if you aim to 
imitate the vivacity of Fielding, it will be but an 
imitation, a faint specter, such a relation as the 
ghosts in Homer bore to men ; but on the other 
hand, if your sense of the ridiculous and inconsist- 
ent is peculiarly keen, you may copy Swift's hu- 
mor and solemn irony, and improve upon them by 
omitting his coarseness. 

You will notice continually in the course of your 
reading how widely this truth is spread. In writ- 
ing history, for instance, which demands a consid- 
erable variation in style, the statesman warms to 
the passages descriptive of great acts of policy and 
great state trials ; the soldier's style rises as his 
heart kindles at the description of battles and 
sieges; the scientific or artistic mind dwells fondly 
on the progress of the victories of industry. And 
it is just here that the ancient writers had so great 
an advantage over us moderns — they lived so much 
more varied lives than we do, that they could throw 
themselves into the labors of writing with a rich 
experience, drawn not from a well-filled library, but 
rom a personal knowledge of the occurrences in 



ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. Ill 

which they had themselves played no insignificant 
part. What wonder that JEschylus should recount 
in imperishable language the overthrow of the 
dreaded Persians, when he had himself been one 
of that gallant band who charged down the plain 
of Marathon in the decisive battle of the world ? 
We talk, by-the-way, loosely enough of the deci- 
sive "battles," in the plural; as if any battle yet 
fought by mortal man could compare with that 
which saved Athens from becoming the chef-lieu 
of a prefecture in some bloated Asiatic satrapy; 
saved it iovher own great future and our own, and 
all times, — the sacred altar from whence all coming- 
generations should kindle their torches of science, 
literature, or art. 

What marvel is it that Thucydides the scholar 
should write inspired by the fire of Thucydides the 
soldier, and the wisdom of Thucydides the politi- 
cian ? Or that Xenophon the well-educated coun- 
try-gentleman should still claim our attention to 
the diaries of Xenophon the volunteer and general ? 
Or that note-books of Cassar's should still interest 
— Csesar the statesman, general, and first emperor 
of Rome ; the one man of bis time who could read 
the future of his mighty country ? 



112 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 

In each of these great writers, too, their style is 
unmistakably a reflected image of their own char- 
acter; nor, if you think a moment upon it, could 
it well be otherwise, if a man is but "true to him- 
self." It is impossible to conceive Hooker's style 
— Hooker, the father of English prose — as careless 
or undignified; or Dryden's, whose prose has hap- 
pily outlived much of his verse, as feeble and ob- 
scure ; or Gibbon's as mean and vulgar ; or Burke's 
as incomplete and timid ; or Napier's as tame. 
Each adopted, as all great writers have done, their 
own style, formed not unfrequently on the model of 
another, but not with any slavish imitation ; they 
made their models' style their own, and thus their 
own became, as I said before, an organic, not a 
mere mechanical existence. 

Now, as you are anxious to form a good style 
for yourself, I will extract some passages at once 
characteristic of some of our greatest writers, and 
expressive of a variety of feelings and passions, 
which each possessed more or less conspicuously, 
and which they have clothed in words, either with 
the aid of simple language, or by adopting some 
figure of speech or peculiarity of style. 

I have already spoken of the language and style 



ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 113 

suitable for a plain simple narrative of simple life 
— a style based on Cobbett and Swift, Cobbett's 
master — which you would do well to cultivate ; as 
Turner worked for years with brown and gray tints 
alone, before he ventured to enter the realms of 
gorgeous color, in which he afterward reigned as 
king without a rival: but the moment you reach 
beyond this narrow limit, and have energetic action 
to describe, your language must rise to the occa- 
sion. See how Napier's does, — his sentences fall 
swift and decisive as one of his own rifle shot. If 
you would know how varied and rich a language 
ours is on one, and that a very narrow, topic, how 
lively, vigorous, and animated words themselves 
become in the hands of a master, himself full of 
lofty sentiment and generous sympathy with the 
scenes, deeds, and men he has immortalized, — read 
the battles and sieges in Napier's Peninsula?^ War, 
and read this now as a sample ; it is the closing 
scene at Albuera. 

" Suddenly and sternly recovering, they closed on 
their terrible enemies ; and then was seen with what 
a strength and majesty the British soldier fights. 
In vain did Soult, by voice and gesture, animate 
his Frenchmen; in vain did the hardiest veterans. 



114 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 

extricating themselves from the crowded columns, 
sacrifice their lives to gain time for the mass to 
open out on such a fair field ; in vain did the mass 
itself bear up, and, fiercely striving, fire indiscrim- 
inately upon friends and foes, while the horsemen 
hovering on the flank threatened to charge the ad- 
vancing line. Nothing could stop that astonishing 
infantry; no sudden burst of undisciplined valor, 
no nervous enthusiasm, weakened the stability of 
their order; their flashing eyes were bent on the 
dark columns in their front ; their measured tread 
shook the ground; their dreadful volleys swept 
away the head of every formation ; their deafening 
shouts overpowered the different cries that broke 
from all parts of the tumultuous crowd, as, foot by 
foot, and with a horrid carnage, it was driven by 
the incessant vigor of the attack to the furthest 
edge of the hill. In vain did the French reserves, 
joining with the struggling multitudes, endeavor to 
sustain the fight ; their efforts only increased the 
irremediable confusion, and the mighty mass giving 
way like a loosened cliff went headlong down the 
ascent. The rain poured after in streams discol- 
ored with blood, and fifteen hundred unwounded 
men, the remnant of six thousand unconquerable 



ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 115 

British soldiers, stood triumphant on the fatal 
field." 

And here observe, besides the impetuosity of the 
style, rivaling that of the soldiers it describes, how 
decidedly and persistently the narrative itself 
marches forward ; the sentences may be long, but 
they are never involved ; and notice above all what 
Mrs. Malaprop liked so well, "a choice derange- 
ment of epitaphs;" each adjective and adverb fit- 
ting into its place almost as if placed there by 
Shakspeare's unerring hand. None but a master 
in composition can summon each epithet he requires, 
and set them without stint and yet without redun- 
dance into the posts they are to occupy. 

Among a crowd of writers not much inferior I 
must mention to you two who, invaluable in other 
respects, should also be read as masters in the art 
of descriptive writing : Macaulay, of scenes in 
history ; Ruskin, of scenes in nature and criticisms 
in art. In the essays of the former the trial of 
Warren Hastings, and in his history the battle of 
Sedgemoor, the trial of the seven bishops, and the 
siege of Londonderry, stand pre-eminent for vivid- 
ness. You will see there all that language can do 
to recall the past. A reader must indeed have been 



116 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION, 

denied by nature the gift of imagination who can- 
not see that dignified court, the gifted accusers, and 
the splendid throng that crowded to the impeach- 
ment of the great proconsul of India. 

Macaulay is so well known, and his works so 
widely circulated, that you can easily find the 
places I have referred you to, and read them at 
length. Ruskin's are unfortunately less appreci- 
ated, partly from their great expense, partly from 
the fact that art is naturally not so popular a sub- 
ject among Englishmen as political history. I will 
quote an extract from his Stones of Venice, that 
you may judge for yourself whether it is not advis- 
able to know more of an author who can at least 
express his thoughts in language at once so ner- 
vous and so picturesque. 

You must understand, that in order to bring the 
scene of St. Mark's Place at Yenice most vividly 
before his readers he takes you first to the west 
front of an English cathedral, and then passes 
rapidly to the great Italian church : heightening 
the lights and deepening the shadows, and bright- 
ening the colored marbles of the latter by con- 
trasting them with the sober tints and uniform 
grays of the northern stones and the northern cli- 



ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 117 

mate. "And so we will go along the straight walk 
to the west front, and there stand for a time, look- 
ing up at its deep pointed porches and the dark 
places between their pillars, where there were 
statues once, and where the fragments here and 
there of a stately figure are still left, which has in 
it the likeness of a king — perhaps indeed a king 
on earth — perhaps a saintly king long ago in 
heaven ; and so higher and higher up to the great 
mouldering wall of rugged sculpture and confused 
arcades, shattered and gray, and grisly, with the 
heads of dragons and mocking fiends, worn by the 
rain and swirling winds into yet unseemlier shape, 
and colored on the stony scales by the deep russet 
orange lichen, melancholy gold ; and so higher 
still to the bleak towers so far above that the eye 
loses itself among the bosses of their tracery, 
though they are rude and strong, and only sees, 
like a drift of eddying black points now closing, 
now scattering, and now settling suddenly into in- 
visible places among the bosses and flowers, the 
crowd of restless birds, that fill the old square with 
that ceaseless clangor of theirs, so harsh and yet 
so soothing, like the cries of birds on a solitary 
coast between the cliffs and the sea." 

11 



118 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 

And now study this beautiful word-painting of 
the art of the sunny south. " We will push fast 
through thera into the shadow of the pillars at the 
end of the Bocca di Piazza, and there we forget 
them all ; for between those pillars there opens a 
great light, and in the midst of it, as we advance 
slowly, the vast tower of St. Mark's seems to lift 
itself visibly forth from the level field of checkered 
stones, and on each side the countless arches pro- 
long themselves into ranged symmetry, as if the 
rugged and irregular houses that pressed together 
-above us in the dark alley had been struck back 
into sudden obedience and lovely order, and all 
their rude casements and broken walls had been 
transformed into arches charged with goodly sculp- 
ture and fluted shafts of delicate stone. 

*'And well may they fall back, for beyond those 
troops of ordered arches there rises a vision out of 
the earth, and all the great square seems to have 
opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see 
it far away; a multitude of pillars and white domes, 
clustered into a long low pyramid of colored light, 
a treasure-keep, it seems, partly of gold, and partly 
of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into 
five great vaulted porches ceiled with fair mosaic. 



ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 119 

and beset with sculpture of alabaster, clear as am- 
ber, and delicate as ivory — sculpture fantastic and 
involved, of palra-leaves and lilies, and grapes and 
pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering 
among the branches, all twined together into an 
endless network of buds and plumes ; and in the 
midst of it the solemn forms of angels, sculptured 
and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other 
across the gates, their figures indistinct among the 
gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves 
beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning 
light as it faded back among the branches of Eden, 
when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. 
And round the walls of the porches there are set 
pillars of variegated stones — ^jasper and porphyry, 
and deep green serpentine, spotted with flakes of 
snow, and marbles that half refuse and half yield 
to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, 'their bluest veins 
to kiss ;' the shadow, as it steals back from them, 
revealing line after line of azure undulation, as the 
receding tide leaves the waved sand ; their capitals 
rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herb- 
age, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and 
mystical signs all beginning and ending in the 
cross. And above them in the broad archivolts a 



120 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 

continuous chain of language and of life, angels 
and the signs of heaven, and the labors of men, 
each in its appointed season upon the earth : and 
above these another range of glittering pinnacles, 
mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers 
— a confusion of delight — amid which the breasts 
of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth 
of golden strength, and the St. Mark's lion lifted 
on a blue field covered with stars, until at last, as 
if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break into a 
marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue 
sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as 
if the breakers on the Lido shore had been frost- 
bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had in- 
laid them with coral and amethyst. 

"Between that grim cathedral of England and 
this, what an interval ! there is a type of it in the 
very birds that haunt them ; for instead of the 
restless crowd — hoarse-voiced and sable-winged — 
drifting on the bleak upper air, the St. Mark's 
porches are full of doves that nestle among the 
marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of 
their living plumes, changing at every motion with 
the tints hardly less lovely that have stood un- 
changed for seven hundred years." 



ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 121 

Now these are but extracts from one of a series 
of great works, the greatest yet that have ever ap- 
peared on art in the English language. And we 
shall value style the more highly when we remem- 
ber that the author undertook to establish prin- 
ciples either forgotten or ignored or despised by 
the artists and critics of his day; to do battle 
against the fetish-worship of great names and pre- 
tentious authorities ; to raise the noble arts of ar- 
chitecture and painting from being the plaything 
of the wealthy, to be the delight and instruction of 
all who would educate themselves sufficiently to ap- 
preciate their worth ; to establish a standard of 
eternal principles — principles not true because ar- 
tistic, but artistic because true — against the dog- 
mas of men who ruled in art for the same reason 
that the one-eyed man was king among the blind. 
Remembering all this, we shall value the aid of 
such an ally as style more than ever — an ally which 
in this case, though at times perhaps too caustic 
and assuming, has by its own vigor and loveliness 
attracted many to a class of works which would 
otherwise have been passed by unopened. What 
a pleasant address, and a clear enunciation, and 

musical voice, and genial manners are to a man, 

11* 



122 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 

that and mucli more is a good style to composition ; 
and we need no more convincing proof of its puis- 
sance than the total revolution in opinion con- 
cerning art mainly effected through the instrument- 
ality of the charming writings of this one author. 



X. 

ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 

T PROPOSE in this my last letter on this subject 
-*- to give illustrations of what are called the 
ornaments of composition — such as irony, pathos, 
wit, banter, etc.; the hills and valleys, broken rocks 
and stately masses in the ordinary and necessarily 
dead level of composition, whether in history, argu- 
ment, or oratory. But in reading extracts from 
speeches, you must recollect that these passages 
were composed and introduced as spoken, not writ- 
ten compositions ; whatever tameness attaches it- 
self to them now is attributable to them in their 
present form. Picture to yourself any assembly 
of English gentlemen, any House of Commons — 
that of the austere Barebones alone excepted — 
and then imagine the shouts of laughter that must 
have greeted the birth of the following witty meta- 
phor. 

In order fully to enjoy the absurdity of the pic- 
£ (123) 



124 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 

ture, you must understand that the Earl of Chatham 
had just seriously damaged his great reputation for 
wisdom and lessened his popularity by the accept- 
ance of a peerage ; he was no longer " the great 
Commoner." And in order to get a ministry to- 
firether, he had been reduced to collect them from 
the most opposite and least likely quarters. Burke 
was now a rising member in the Opposition, having 
entered the House comparatively late in life, rich 
with the thought and study of years, and gifted with 
that astonishing eloquence which could excite his 
hearers equally to laughter or to tears — which 
could enliven by vivid illustrations the most weari- 
some subjects, and ennoble a debate by founding it 
upon arguments based on principle, instead of on 
factious interests. 

He has thus immortalized the handiwork of the 
newly-created Earl of Chatham. "He made an 
administration so checkered and speckled ; he put 
together a piece of joinery so crossly indented and 
so whimsically dovetailed ; a cabinet so variously 
inlaid ; such a piece of diversified mosaic ; such a 
tessellated pavement without cement, here a bit of 
black stone and there a bit of white ; patriots and 
courtiers ; king's friends and republicans ; Whigs 



ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 125 

and Tories ; treacherous friends and open enemies, 
— that it was indeed a very curious show, but ut- 
terly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand on. The 
colleagues whom he had assorted at the same 
boards stared at each other, and were obliged to 
ask, ' Sir, your name V ' Sir, you have the advant- 
age of me.' * Mr. Such-a-one, I beg a thousand 
pardons.' I venture to say it did so happen that 
persons had a single office divided between them 
who had never spoken to each other in their lives 
until they found themselves, they knew not how, 
pigging together, heads and points, in the same 
truckle-bed." 

And now, if you would conceive how deeply the 
Sdeva indignatio at the perpetration of a shameful 
faction can stir a generous mind, read this majestic 
protest against one of the gravest crimes that 
blackens the pages of the history of England — the 
employment of Indians in our war against the 
Americans for their independence ; a war which, 
begun in obstinate infatuation, was conducted with 
imbecility and concluded with dishonor. The noble 
lord referred to by the Earl of Chatham is Lord 
Suffolk, who had defended this disgraceful measure 
on the ground that it is perfectly allowable to use 



126 ■ ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 

''all the means which God and nature have put 
into our hands;" which sentiment would of course 
have included a liberal use of poisoned weapons 
and poisoned wells and food. " My lords," was 
the scathing reply of the old orator, " we are called 
upon as members of this House, as men, as Chris- 
tians, to protest against such horrible barbarity. 
'That God and nature have put into our hands.' 
What ideas of God and nature that noble lord may 
entertain I know not ; but I know that such de- 
testable principles are equally abhorrent to religion 
and humanity. What ! to attribute the sacred 
sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the 
Indian's scalping-knife ; to the cannibal savage, 
torturing, murdering, devouring, drinking the blood 
of his mangled victims ! Such notions shock every 
precept of morality, every feeling of humanity, 
every sentiment of honor. These abominable 
principles, and this more abominable avowal of 
them, demand the most decisive indignation, I call 
upon that right reverend and this most learned 
bench to vindicate the religion of their God, to 
support the justice of their country; I call upon 
the honor of your lordships to reverence the dignity 
of your ancestors and to maintain your own ; I call 



ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 12*7 

upon the spirit and humanity of my country to 
vindicate the national character." 

But of all the ornaments, or rather powers — 
forces, I should say — of composition, none equal 
in sustained strength that which Swift used so 
mightily in all, and especially in his political writ- 
ings. " The lord of irony, that master-spell," as 
one poet has described him ; who could " laugh 
and shake in Rabelais' easy-chair," as another has 
well pictured him ; to which remark a third added 
the mournfully true reflection that " it was the soul 
of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place." Whether the 
images evoked are simply ludicrous and lively, as 
in some of his travels, or grave and serious, or 
grotesque and horrible, the effect is equally irre- 
sistible, the blow equally trenchant. In one of his 
pamphlets on Ireland he discusses at great length 
and with an unrivaled mock gravity, the propriety 
of killing and salting down all Irish babies for the 
English market. Do not omit to notice in this 
extract (as in all his writings) the transparent 
clearness and (if I may so call it) the nervous elas- 
ticity of his simple Saxon language, so well suited 
for the expression of that master-spell which Sydney 
Smith too, among other political writers, well un- 
derstood how to wield. 



128 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 

The extracts I have chosen are from one of the 
most powerful of all Swift's works, and the very 
title of wiiich is too good to be forgotten : "An 
Argument to prove that the abolishing of Christi- 
anity in England may, as things now stand, be at- 
tended with some inconvenience, and perhaps not 
produce those good effects proposed thereby." 

'' It is likewise urged that there are by computa- 
tion in this kingdom above ten thousand parsons, 
whose revenues, added to those of my lords the 
bishops, would suffice to maintain at least two hun- 
dred young gentlemen of wit and pleasure, and 
freethinking enemies to priestcraft, narrow prin- 
ciples, pedantry and prejudices, who might be an 
ornament to the court and town ; and then, again, 
so great a number of able-[bodied] divines might 
be a recruit to our fleet and armies. This, indeed, 
appears to be a consideration of some weight. But 
then, on the other side, several things deserve to be 
considered likewise ; as, first, whether it may not 
be thought necessary that in certain tracts of coun- 
try, like what we call parishes, there should be one 
man at least of abilities to read and write. Then 
it seems a wrong computation that the revenues of 
the Church throughout the island would be large 



ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 129 

enough to maintain two hundred young gentlemen, 
or even half that number, after the present refined 
way of living ; that is, to allow each of them such 
a rent as, in the modern form of speech, would 
make them easy. 

" It is again objected, as a very absurd ridiculous 
custom, that a set of men should be suffered, much 
less employed and hired, to bawl one day in seven 
against the lawfulness of those methods most in 
use toward the pursuit of greatness, riches, or 
pleasure, which are the constant practice of all 
men alive. But this objection is, I think, a little 
unworthy so refined an age as ours. Let us argue 
this matter calmly. I appeal to the heart of any 
polite freethinker whether, in the pursuit of gratify- 
ing a predominant passion, he hath not always felt 
a wonderful incitement by reflecting it was a thing 
forbidden ; and therefore we see, in order to culti- 
vate this taste, the wisdom of the nation hath taken 
special care that the ladies should be furnished with 
prohibited silks and the men with prohibited wine. 
And, indeed, it were to be wished that some other 
prohibitions were promoted in order to improve the 
pleasures of the town ; which, for want of such ex- 
pedients, begin already, as I am told, to flag and 

12 



130 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 

grow languid, giving way daily to cruel inroads 
from the spleen." 

It is rather a singular coincidence that two of 
the most thrilling and therefore best known in- 
stances of pathos should occur in the speeches of 
two of the greatest orators in the world — speeches 
delivered on almost identically the same subjects, 
and yet at an interval of more than two thousand 
years ; Demosthenes pleading the cause of the un- 
happy Phocians, Burke that of the miserable in- 
habitants of the Carnatic, in language almost as 
touching to read now as when it was composed. 
But the passage in Burke is well known ; for who 
that has once read can ever forget the crowd of 
prisoners "enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry;" 
the " people in beggary — a nation that stretched 
out its hands for food;" "the fulfillment of their 
impious vow by Hyder Ali and his yet more fero- 
cious son ;" and the climax, where the orator bids 
his audience figure to themselves an equal extent 
of " our sweet and cheerful country — from Thames 
to Trent north and south, and from the Irish to the 
German Sea east and west — emptied and em- 
boweled (may God avert the omen of our crimes !) 
by so accomplished a desolation" ? 



ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 131 

There is another example of pathos, less orator- 
ical in its language, but still more affecting in its 
nature, in Burke's mention of his son, in his memo- 
rable reply to the attacks made by the Duke of 
Bedford and Earl of Lauderdale upon his pension. 
As an expression of personal grief and desolation 
it is manly, unostentatious, and yet singularly 
affecting ; never did words convey more vividly 
how the iron had entered into the soul of a parent. 
To understand the reason for his seemingly intrud- 
ing his own private sorrow upon the public, you 
should read the " Letter to a Noble Lord," and 
master the circumstances to which that letter owed 
its existence : often must the noble lord — and fu- 
ture generations of his family too perhaps — have 
cursed the spirit of folly which evoked such an 
annihilating rejoinder. Wit, sarcasm, learning, 
logic, eloquence, an unequaled copia verborum, 
are ruthlessly devoted to crushing his ill-judging 
critic ; and the memory of his captious assailant is 
now only preserved to us by the genius of his 
mighty antagonist. 

Long before the year 11 7 9 the rapid increase of 
the national debt had already caused great uneasi- 
ness : in that year it attracted special attention. 



132 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 

and public meetings were held in various counties 
to compel the reduction of our excessive annual 
expenditure ; the Duke of Richmond in the Upper 
House, and Burke in the Lower, adverted to the 
subject; and in 1T80 Burke moved for leave to 
bring in no less than five bills to abolish useless 
places and otherwise reduce this preposterous ex- 
travagance — an extravagance we are still paying 
for now, and which many a generation after us 
will have to bear too. Here again you should read, 
or rather study, the whole speech; it is a master- 
piece of argument, of thorough acquaintance with 
and exhaustion of his subject, a storehouse of sound 
political principles on the subjects of revenue and 
commerce, and embellished with such graces of style 
as one would have thought impossible in a speech 
on so unpoetic a subject as economy and trade. 

Among other propositions in the bill was the 
following: that all claimants on the exchequer, 
including officers of the court and ministers of 
state, should be arranged in certain classes, and 
paid according to whatever class they stood in; 
the first before the second, and so on up to the 
ninth and last : if there was not sufficient money 
in the exchequer to pay all, the deficit was not to 



ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 133 

be made good — as had hitherto been done — by 
forestalling the revenue of the coming year, but the 
ninth class were to lose their salaries, then the 
eighth, and so on. Now the classes were arranged 
according to their utility to the country, and the 
inability to recover their due on the part of the 
members of that class : so the judges were placed 
in the first, the ambassadors in the second, but in 
the eighth the officers of honor about the king, and 
in the ninth the premier, the chancellor of the ex- 
chequer, and other lords of the treasury : thus — 
assuming that the vast allowance of the civil list 
was sufficient — it was just, as well as politic, that 
the loss should fall on those through whose delin- 
quency it was occasioned. Then follows a most 
ludicrous picture of the consternation and uproar 
in the royal household, upon whom the loss would 
fall immediately after the great minister of the 
crown, on the arrival of an insolvent quarter. 

" If the failure from the delinquency should be 
very considerable, it will fall on the class directly 
above the first lord of the treasury, as well as upon 

himself and his board It will fall upon 

masters of the horse, upon lord-chamberlains, upon 
lord-stewards, upon grooms of the stole, and lords 

12* 



134 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 

of the bedchamber. The household troops form 
an army who will be ready to mutiny for want of 
pay, and whose mutiny will be really dreadful to 
a commander-in-chief. A rebellion of the thirteen 
lords of the bedchamber would be far more terrible 
to a minister, and would probably affect his power 
more to the quick, than a revolt of the thirteen 
colonies. What an uproar such an event would 
create at court ! What petitions and committees 
and associations would it not produce ! Bless me, 
what a clattering of white sticks and yellow sticks 
would be about his head ; what a storm of gold 
keys would fly about the ears of a minister ; what 
a shower of Georges and Thistles, and medals, and 
collars of S.S. would assail him at his first entrance 
into the antechamber after an insolvent Christmas 
quarter I A tumult that could not be appeased by 
all the harmony of the new-year's ode." 

I have quoted thus largely out of Burke's speech 
for two reasons : firstly because of the excellence 
and the variety of the style of ornament ; and sec- 
ondly because there is certainly no other single 
orator from whose works so much is to be learnt 
of sound practical wisdom in the science of govern- 
ment : it is no mere orator or voluble talker that 



ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 135 

we have to learn from, but a man gifted with a 
clear insight into principles, and yet well aware of 
how far those principles would be practicable in 
politics ; deeply imbued with Solon's wisdom, to 
know the best laws possible, but propose the best 
that would be tolerated. Burke, remember, was 
the one and only man who, as Adam Smith ad- 
mitted, at once comprehended the total revolution 
he proposed in political economy, and who, in fact, 
had in thought anticipated him. Burke was, be- 
yond all doubt, " the best judge of a picture he 
ever knew," was the assertion of Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds : his knowledge was as various as his genius 
was profound ; a knowledge embracing even one or 
two handicrafts. If therefore you can acquire 
vigor and elegance of style simultaneously with an 
insight into sound political truths, so much the 
better. Too often with us the jewel is spoilt by 
the setting; worth marred by tastelessness : here 
you have, with some exceptions — humanum est 
errare — the jewel and its setting each in their 
perfect beauty. It is better, moreover, not to try 
too much at first : the learner in geology studies 
a gravel-pit, then a valley, before he tries to trace 
dislocated strata across a broken country. Few 



136 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 

were the authors, but thoroughly read and reread, 
from whom Southey learnt his English prose ; and 
there are few greater masters in English prose 
writing than Southey, And if you cannot content 
yourself with Swift and Burke for masters to study 
with for some time at least, you may perhaps, as a 
witty Irish priest told an Englishman who ridiculed 
his belief in Purgatory, " go further and fare worse." 



XI. 

ON METAPHOR. 

II/TETAPHOR is at once the oldest and the 
-'-'-'- most widely used of all the ornaments of 
composition in every language, whether of civilized 
or barbarous nations, and in every form of poetry 
and prose alike, extending from a single word to a 
complicated sentence. It is, to a great extent, not 
so much an ornament of language as a necessary 
part of language itself — simple ideas necessarily 
preceding complex. Just as the expression would 
run, "the savage animal devours with his mouth;" 
so it is not so much poetical as natural to speak of 
"the mouth," not "the edge" of the sword ; and a 
flame as a "devouring" fire, and "tasting" of 
death, as the old Hebrews did. Again, inasmuch 
as the natural expression of joy is laughter and 
song, it is not (as we usually terra it) a poetic 
image, but rather a necessary mode of expressing 
the simplest ideas, to speak of the fields standing 

(IZI) 



138 ON METAPHOR. 

SO thick with corn that they "laugh and sing." 
Not that I deny the poetic beauty of metaphor, 
but as a matter of fact it can easily be shown that 
in all early literature (which always takes the form 
of poetry to aid the memory) metaphor was em- 
ployed, not because it was poetic, but because it 
was indispensable for the purpose of expressing 
one's ideas in intelligible language at all. In later, 
not in primitive times, it is employed not compul- 
sorily, but voluntarily, to add a vividness and pi- 
quancy to words and ideas that would otherwise 
sound bald and tame. 

It is said by those who have studied the subject, 
that a nation may be known by its proverbs ; cer- 
tainly the bent of a nation's disposition is at least 
as clearly marked in the metaphors most in vogue 
among its speakers and writers. The ruling pas- 
sion with the Athenians — whom we really mean 
when we talk loosely about " the old Greeks" — 
was a love of the sea, a craving after and determ- 
ination to secure and maintain their naval suprem- 
acy ; and so strongly is this fact marked in their 
literature, in their use of metaphors alone, that 
had their history been lost, we could have rightly 
assumed that a people who could hardly open its 



ON METAPHOR. 139 

mouth without expressing its ideas in naval ima- 
gery must have been very devoted to, and dependent 
on, the sea. Which in point of fact the Athenians 
were : their empire lay scattered (like ours) over 
a crowd of islands and sea-girt promontories ; their 
mines Idj beyond the sea ; their daily bread came 
over the sea ; they depended on the sea equally for 
their daily subsistence and their political supremacy. 
Their city, though originally built inland, they, as 
it were, dragged down and chained to the sea by 
their long walls ; and every stone of those sea- 
walls overlooked the bay of Salamis, the scene of 
such a naval victory to them as those of La Hogue 
and the Nile and Camperdown and Trafalgar 
might perhaps be to us rolled into one, or as if we 
could localize the many various spots where the 
Spanish Armada suffered, partly from our attacks, 
but mostly from tempests, and fix that one spot 
within sight of St. Paul's Cathedral. 

It is an embarras des richesses, "a sea" of 
metaphors taken from the sea, which greets you at 
every step in the Athenian writers. When Medea, 
in Euripides' greatest drama, wants words to ex- 
press her utter desolation, she does not merely de- 



140 ON METAPHOR. 

scribe her loneliness, as Catharine (in Henry VlII.) 
does so movingly, 

"Alas, I am a woman, friendless, helpless." 

Whose complaint runs thus ; 

"Nay, forsooth, my friends. 
They that must weigh out my afflictions. 
They that my trust must grow to, live not here; 
They are, as all my other comforts, far hence 
In mine own country, lords." 

Notice how Medea's language, exactly the same in 
meaning, differs in metaphor : 

"Nor have I 
Or mother's love, brother's, or friend's, wherein 
Safe anchorage to find from these my sorrows." 

And in the next scene, where her banishment is 
announced to her : 

" Most wretched am I, utterly undone : 
My foes crowd every stitch of sail to harm me, 
Nor friendly port appears to save from ruin." 

And when at length gleams of hope do arise upon 
her clouded horizon, the same metaphor is still 
sustained : 

"For this good man, just where I labored most, 
Appears a port of refuge for my plans : 
Here will I bind my hawsers to the shore." 



ON METAPHOR. 141 

Nor is it to be thought that this language is pecu- 
liar to the character ; ia the play of Hercules 
gone mad the injunction given to madness runs 
thus : 

"Rouse him to fury, let murder loose full sail." 

So in the CEdipus at Golonus, the Chorus bids the 
man of many sorrows 

"Begone, cast off your moorings from our land." 

And lest this should be thought the more exalted 

language of tragedy, turn to Aristophanes' broad 

comedy, and hear the language, bold and reckless, 

of the outspoken Athenian populace : the key-note 

to the whole passage is struck in the use of the 

word "sea;" in a natural, not a metaphorical 

sense at all; but in a moment the wits of a naval 

people are set working out naval images. See his 

Knights (1. 432), where in the course of a few lines 

you have three speakers sharing between them the 

following metaphors: "a furious squall of rage 

and anger," "take in reefs," "run before the gale," 

"sound the pump," "slack away the sheet," "a 

gale of false accusations," " let go your clew-lines," 

"the gale's abating:" — it would be impossible to 

13 



142 ON METAPHOR. 

translate the passage without adding much ex- 
planatory matter. Both here and in many another 
passage in their great comedian you may easily see 
how largely metaphorical language among the 
Athenians was indebted to the sea and naval 
affairs : they were seamen to the backbone ; and 
out of the abundance of the heart a nation's mouth 
speaks, as well as a man's. 

Still more decisively is the singularly double 
character of the other great nation of antiquity 
sketched in their use of metaphors. To some 
writers, who have looked only on one side of the 
Roman character, that great nation has appeared 
a band of ferocious soldiers, annexing country 
after country, annihilating all national life, absorb- 
ing every people, of whatever language, religion, 
or race, into one compact uniform body, governed 
by the same laws which were imposed by the one 
central power, and administered by one uniform 
system of government. Those writers, on the 
other hand, who have looked to their government 
of their subject provinces, rather than to the means 
by which they acquired provinces to govern, are 
astonished at the general success of their system ; 
how wisely and largely they adapted themselves to 



ON METAPHOR. 143 

the circumstances of the different states they had 
to rule ; and yet how perfectly they organized 
government in all its parts throughout all their 
vast empire ; its armies less than half of v^hat has 
been for a century required to keep the same 
countries now in order ; its perfect system of com- 
munication from the Grampians to the Euphrates ; 
the freedom of trade throughout their vast domin- 
ions ; the great works of public utility, whose size 
and massiveness in a third or fourth-rate town sur- 
pass ours in the capitals of the world ; one code 
of laws, civil and criminal, for all the numerous 
inhabitants of most of Europe, a large tract of the 
west of Asia, and all Africa that was inhabitable. 
Organization, discipline, order, rule, system — this 
was the mainspring of the Roman life. Neglect- 
ing art almost entirely, sciences completely, litera- 
ture very largely, he devoted himself to the de- 
veloping this idea of discipline in two branches 
only; and, as is the case with most men with an 
idea, he succeeded perfectly. War and law were 
to him the two objects of life ; " regere imperio 
populos," "debellare superbos" — to rule the na- 
tion with sovereign sway, to crush all who resist — 
were his two ideas : is it extraordinary if his ruling 



144 ON METAPHOR. 

passion has been petrified in his language ? With 
Cicero, to resist the temptations of vice is " to de- 
clare war a,gainst it;" the final performance of 
duties is "the having served all your campaigns ;" 
to take a part in an agreement with a fair share of 
success is "justo sacramento contendere," which I 
think is hardly translatable into English at all. 
So the ideas which we express by vigor, tone, 
energy, are in Latin homely and coarse images 
derived from military training and battle- scenes ; 
"blood," "nerves," "arms," "bones;" the ideas of 
the recruiting-sergeant predominate. 

As regards their other great foible, law, their 
use of its language for metaphor is even more 
strongly marked ; and though this would appear 
pedantic to us, it was not so with a nation of law- 
yers : with them the forms and processes of the law 
were far more simple than with us, and every edu- 
cated man understood them perfectly; indeed, for 
some centuries every Roman gentleman was ex- 
pected to defend his dependant personally in the 
law-court : no wonder, then, that literature and 
speeches should smack of their education ; that 
"to call upon a man to answer for his proceed- 
ings" was expressed by "threatening him with an 



ON METAPHOR. 145 

action;" to "agree in your dislike to a man" was 
to "sign your name to a bill of accusation against 
him;" to attack a man's character violently was 
to "take an oath in court that you do not accuse 
him out of malice," and so on : the whole atmos- 
phere of their literature is redolent of pleas, de- 
murrers, witness-boxes, and jurymen. The Ro- 
mans, too, were great farmers; consequently this 
pursuit furnished them with metaphors not a few ; 
not so many, however, as to make the subject worth 
dwelling upon. Quotations with reference to their 
two great characteristics might be made by pages 
full. 

With ourselves our interests are many and 
various ; so that I do not find that any one na- 
tional pursuit has given its color to our common 
metaphorical language. In no country in Europe 
is there so complete a blending of different occu- 
pations, so little of the supremacy of one profession 
or employment; consequently all professions, all 
trades, business, amusement, games, ancient recol- 
lections, modern ideas, all alike contribute to sup- 
ply the metaphorical language of everyday life. 
Take manufactures, for example ; the whole " ma- 

13* 



146 ON METAPHOR. 

chinery " of state worked imperfectly ; the " wheels " 
of business were clogged; and finally, "the whole 
machine broke hopelessly down." Take law: I 
"demurred" to his statement on many grounds; 
he died, and the question passed to a higher " tri- 
bunal" than man's; a "trumped-up charge." 
Take trades: strike while the "iron" is hot; 
"cement" an alliance with another nation ; a hope 
"built" on sure "foundations." From medicine: 
an "antidote" to the mischief going on; "sinews 
of war." Take games : "he played his cards well ;" 
a "trump ;" a "fine stroke." Ancient customs : "to 
throw down the gauntlet." Music: "harmonize 
with;" "discord;" "disconcerted." The Scrip- 
tures: the real inducement was the "loaves and 
fishes;" to "wash your hands" of the whole pro- 
ceeding. 

But with us, as with the ancient Athenians, the 
salt water has great influence ; to nothing like the 
same absorbing extent with us as with them ; but 
yet, great as are our other interests, whether of 
business or pleasure, I think this is the greatest, 
and that our many metaphors drawn from the sea 
prove that such is the case. 



ON METAPHOR. 147 

Nor is it to be wondered at ; no other scene is 
equally one of duty and profit and amusement. 
Our royal navy absorbs scores of boys annually ; 
our merchant-service more still. Half the pater- 
familiases in business look to their six weeks at the 
sea as the year's one holiday ; and yachting is hap- 
pily a very flourishing institution. Little wonder, 
then, that Jack has imported his lingo duty-free 
into our inland regions, and given a smack of the 
sea to the conversation of very unseamanlike char- 
acters indeed. We " sound " a person's inten- 
tions, "fathom" the mystery, "drift" helplessly 
into difficulties; the state is thrown on its "beam- 
ends," or some great statesman takes the " helm " 
and " pilots the vessel of the commonwealth into 
smooth water;" we "run foul" of an adversary; 
our fortunes are "wrecked;" there was the "rock" 
they split upon; we "press", all we can into our 
service, " run " before the gale, or in a difficulty 
" sail as near the wind" as possible. 

Nor are we in bad society in these nautical met- 
aphors. In one of the best-known and most pa- 
thetic speeches in any of his plays Shakspeare 
makes the great Cardinal thus describe his fallen 
fortunes : 



148 ON METAPHOR. 

*' Say, Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory, 
And sounded all the depths and shoals of honor, 
Found thee a way out of his wreck to rise in, 
A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it." 

I do not set much store by any rules about the 
use of metaphors, except against the confusion of 
them. Hamlet's expression, " to take arras against 
a sea of troubles," has been condemned as false 
metaphor ; probably unjustly, because to take up 
arms has become an idiom, and equivalent to the 
idea of resistance and opposition, so entirely that 
the original notion of seizing one's sword and 
shield is wholly lost by lapse of time. A rapid 
change of metaphor, which is very common in 
Shakspeare, arising from the exuberance of his 
poetic fancy, is very beautiful when guided by good 
taste. I mention the fact because a frigid criticism 
has condemned such changes, which are in reality 
to be highly valued ; as the art of the architect 
who Gan cover a doorway with gorgeous sculpture 
— men and angels, and trees and flowers, and birds 
and beasts, figures and medallions, bas-reliefs and 
high-reliefs — and yet without a sign of oppression 
or overcrowding the original design. Take, for 
example, 



ON METAPHOR. 149 

<'The current that with gentle murmur glides, 
Thou knowest, being stopped, impetuously doth rage; 
But when his fair course is not hindered, 
He makes sweet music with the enameled stones, 
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge 
He overtaketh in hiB pilgrimaged^ 

Here you have four metaphors in three lines. He 
would be a bold critic who would venture to con- 
demn the abundance of them. The spirit of true 
ornament is better understood now. If guided by 
good taste, you cannot have too much, any more 
than the sun can set in too gorgeous a firmament 
of many-colored clouds. It is worth observing 
how much may be expressed by a single word of 
metaphor ; but then it is a master's hand that has 
summoned that word into that place. Could any 
one word express more perfectly the disgust of 
men disappointed of their expectations from one 
they had helped to raise than " this ingrate and 
cankered Bolingbroke " ? 

When Hamlet is determined to solve the ques- 
tion of his uncle's fears, he will not merely watch 
him through the play, but " I mine eyes will rivet 
on his face." 

Horace has been quoted, and rightly, as sup- 
plying excellent instances of metaphor, regulated 



150 ON METAPHOR 

by perfect good taste ; and from his example at- 
tempts have absurdly been made to draw a strin- 
gent rule against the use of more than three or 
four words at most in the same metaphor. It would 
really be as reasonable to confine the prolific fancy 
of a Shakspeare or a Milton within Horatian 
limits as it would be to attempt to accommodate 
an eagle within the exquisite workmanship of the 
humming-bird's nest. I admire heartily the excel- 
lent taste of such metaphors as 



and 



'* Quo/on^e derivata clades 
In patriam populumque^wcciY;" 

"Incedis per ignes 
Suppositos cineri doloso.^^ 



But because Horace thus — most wisely I doubt not 
— limited himself, are we to disparage Milton's 
most lovely lines — 

**or they led the vine 
To wed her elm ; she spoused, about him twines 
Her marriageable arms, and with her brings 
Her dower, the adopted clusters to adorn 
His barren leaves;" 

where the metaphor is continued through at least 
seven words ? The truth is, that no rigid rule is 
applicable. The principle is identical in Horace 



ON METAPHOR. 151 

and all other great poets and composers in all lan- 
guages. Never protract your metaphor so far as 
to cause the least obscurity : this will alone ac- 
count for the brevity of Horace's metaphors. Of 
all faults of writing he dreaded obscurity or con- 
fusion the most, and naturally trusted himself least 
where there were the strongest temptations. It is 
a noticeable proof of the largeness of heart of our 
great Shakspeare, that so many of his most pow- 
erful metaphors are taken from the common events, 
usages, implements of everyday life: it is another 
lesson in calling nothing common or unclean, in 
"finding the soul of good " in things "common," if 
not " evil." 

I will give you a few instances of metaphors 
from his plays — a treasure-house of metaphor; 
and, as they are often not understood, I will leave 
you to puzzle them out for yourself, as there are 
always good editions of Shakspeare within reach : 

**For thus the native hue of resolution 
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." 

Then that perfect description of the functions of 
sleep — 

"Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care." 



152 ON METAPHOR. 

And the singular but most expressive metaphor by 
which Lady Macbeth expresses the total helpless- 
ness of the drunken guards — 

*' For til em 
Y/ill I with, wine and wassail so convince, 
That memory, the warder of the brain, 
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason . 
A limbeck only." 

Of course, an ornament of composition so full of 
life and power in poetry cannot fail of being as 
effective in oratory : and there, next to poetry, we 
find it in full force — often, indeed, carrying all be- 
fore it, through the speaker who really understands 
the use of the weapon he is wielding. If any hit 
is made in a speech more telling than usual, you 
may be sure that in six cases out of seven the ora- 
tor has introduced some well-applied metaphor. 
Metaphor was an ally as much prized in the Athe- 
nian law-courts as at St. Stephens nowadays. 
There is a very amusing instance of it in a speech 
of Demosthenes made in behalf of a gentleman 
named Ariston, who brought an action for assault 
and battery against one Conon. Ariston had man- 
ifestly been in the army, and he recounted his story 
to his counsel in military language : how he had 



ON METAPHOR. 153 

been marching down the street, and was attacked 
in the rear, I believe, — I quote from memory of 
the speech read long ago, — taken in the flank, 
squashed in the melee — and so on ; all which ex- 
pressions Demosthenes stored up, and reproduced 
in court to the vast amusement of the jury. 

One of the best instances of metaphor — and 
this we may notice for the advantage of believers 
in the Horatian maxim — extending through seve- 
ral pages, is to be found in Burke's great speech 
on economical reform : " I speak, sir, of the board 
of trade and plantations. This board is a sort of 
temperate bed of influence — a sort of gently ripen- 
ing hot-house, where eight members of parliament 
receive salaries of a thousand a year for a certain 
given time for doing little, in order to mature at a 
proper season a claim to two thousand, to be 
granted for doing less, and on the credit of having 
toiled so long in that inferior laborious department. 
.... This board, sir, had both its original forma- 
tion and its regeneration in a job. In a job it was 
conceived, and in a job its mother brought it forth. 
.... It was projected in the year 1688, and it 
continued in a tottering and rickety childhood for 
about three or four years, — for it died in the year 

14 



154 ON METAPHOR. 

1693, a babe of as little hopes as ever swelled the 
bills of mortality in the article of convulsed or 
overlaid children, who have hardly stepped over 
the threshold of life. In the year 1696 the court 
called into life this board of trade which had slept 
since 1693." Notice now how the same metaphor 

is felicitously carried on to its children 

*' Two colonies alone owe their origin to that board. 
Georgia .... that colony has cost the nation 
very great sums of money. Whereas, the colonies 
which have had the fortune of not being godfa- 
thered by the board of trade never cost the nation 
a shilling, except what has been so properly spent 
in losing them. But the colony of Georgia, weak 
as it was, carried with it to its last hour, and car- 
ries even in its present pallid visage, the perfect 

resemblance of its parents The province 

of Nova Scotia was the youngest and the favorite 
child of the board. Good God ! what sums the 
nursing of that ill-thriving, hard-visaged, and ill- 
favored brat has cost to this wittol nation !" 

I have now told you something of the origin of 
metaphor in different languages, and of its em- 
ployment by the best authors ; false metaphor, or 
the joining forcibly two disconnected and dissimilar 



ON METAPHOR. 155 

images, is so palpably a fault, that there is the less 
need of enlarging on it. I will only, in conclusion, 
remind you that in proportion as metaphor is pow- 
erful, so is care required in the use of it. A skilj- 
ful workman will carve an infinity of scenery and 
figures lovely, ludicrous, pathetic, or grotesque, 
with half a dozen gouges and chisels ; while the 
careless or ignorant will but cut his fingers, and 
quarrel with his tool-chest. 



XII. 

HOW TO MAKE HISTORY INTERESTING? 

TTOW is one to make history interesting? I 
-^-^ have mentioned in another essay how much 
history is to be found contained within the small 
limits of a county map. Did it ever occur to you 
that in your rides round your own homes you are 
often treading on ground whose history would at 
the same time much increase the interest of your 
ride and add not a little, at the same time, to your 
knowledge of days and men gone by ? 

It is one of the great privileges of an old coun- 
try that its soil abounds in reminiscences. No 
sn^all number of the country houses we flit by on 
the railroad are connected with names of lasting 
interest ; while some buildings, such as Westmin- 
ster Abbey above all, and to a certain degree all 
our larger cathedrals, can each " unfold a tale" we 
should be glad enough to know. Nothing strikes 
an educated American more forcibly in this coun- 
(156) 



HOW TO MAKE HISTORY INTERESTING? 157 

try than its numerous historical associations. He 
speaks of the sacred ground of Runnymede, and 
Stratford Church, and Chalgrove Field, and the 
transepts of Westminster, in language which ap- 
pears to us little less than strained and affected, 
though certainly the blame lies with those with 
whom ''familiarity has bred contempt." 

You would be surprised if you noticed the 
amount of history of our own country — and that I 
assume roust have some considerable interest for 
an Englishman — that lies close at our doors. We 
are at this spot within an easy day's excursion of 
a castle which is almost unique in England, com- 
bining a perfect Roman and perfect Norman fort- 
ress in one ; a ruined abbey, whose want of history 
is fully compensated by its singular beauty and the 
perfect history it gives of its own building in its 
own architecture ; of another once much grander 
monastery, now unhappily almost a complete wreck, 
but where you still are shown the tower in which 
the heroic Margaret of Anjou took sanctuary in 
the troublous wars of the Roses, where the ill-ad- 
vised Perkin Warbeck fled for the same security 
about thirty years later, and where you may still see 
the moat and walls with which the first noble owner 

14* 



158 HOW TO MAKE HISTORY INTERESTING? 

of it fortified himself against the French priva- 
teers who swarmed over these seas in those times, 
and whose incursions were checked by some half 
dozen forts still extant as a proof of the care of 
the eighth Henry for the honor of his country. 
And this brings us to another spot of interest hard 
by — to the scene of the great naval battle in 
Henry YIII.'s reign, so well described by Froude, 
which the king viewed from the mainland ; and of 
the landing which the French effected close by, to 
their own speedy discomfiture — their last serious 
landing on English soil. Within a few miles of 
us rise the walls of a town which saw the fifth 
Henry's gallant fleet depart for Agincourt, and the 
yearly arrival of the rich argosies from Venice 
with the prized stores of eastern spices and goods 
unknown, except through them, in the English 
markets ; and omitting historical studies of less 
importance, we can stand at the very place in the 
street where the murderer Felton struck down the 
then first subject in England, Charles the First's 
favorite minister, almost before the eyes of his 
wife. We can visit the two prisons last occupied 
by the unhappy Charles before his death ; and after 
seeing the window he tried to escape through in 



HOW TO MAKE HISTORY INTERESTING? 159 

the one, we are not so much surprised at the other 
lonely fortress in which he passed so many solitary 
months, that dreary sea-girt promontory, where he 
must have indeed felt that he "who enters here 
leaves hope behind." 

Now, the scenes of these historical events are 
contained within so small a space of country, that 
we in the center are nowhere more than twelve 
miles distant from any scene that I have mentioned 
to you. But you will tell me that we are situated 
here on very "classic soil" indeed. I shall be 
much surprised if any one of your homes is upon 
ground of less historic interest. Let us see ; I 
will take any one at hap-hazard. 

You have within easy distance of your home one 
field of battle — a great decisive battle too — in 
Alfred's days ; some curious British antiquities im- 
mortalized in one of Scott's most tragic novels ; 
and the mansion of a noble family, singular from 
the cause of its erection in so lonely a situation, 
the great plague, one of " our homes of ancient 
peace," another, the delight of the antiquarian, the 
terror of the superstitious neighborhood ; two bat- 
tle-scenes of the civil war between king and par- 
liament. Your country is bisected by a Koman 



160 HOW TO MAKE HISTORY INTERESTING? 

road, underlaid by Roman pavements, piled up 
with earth-works perhaps older still : as every- 
where almost in our little island we have a tangible 
history of three or four conquests, and many an 
epoch of war and peace besides, within, at farthest, 
an easy drive of our own firesides. 

It would be mere repetition to select any other 
centers, though many I could name : the neighbor- 
hood, for instance, of York, Winchester, Stamford, 
Bristol, Windsor, would be found to own far higher 
claims to the title of classic ground than either of 
the centers I have chosen. You will be satisfied 
by these two examples that there is plenty to be 
seen; plenty of the liveliest interest to us who 
boast that we live as much in the past as in the 
present ; plenty of interest to a people the titles 
of whose magistrates and officers have remained 
unchanged for near upon one thousand years, 
whose counties and parishes embrace the same 
limits they did when Doomsday Book was made, 
whose government is but a gradual develop- 
ment of principles of liberty conceived and carried 
out at least a century in advance of any other na- 
tion in Europe; where' architecture reached its 
perfection in the fourteenth century, and whose 



HOW TO MAKE HISTORY INTERESTING? 161 

House of Commons was a formidable power in the 
State in the fifteenth : 

"A land of settled government — 
A land of just and old renown, 
Where freedom slowly broadens down 
From precedent to precedent." 



XIII. 

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SIMILE 
AND METAPHOR? 

"TN a simile, the two subjects are kept distinct in 
-*- the expression as well as in the thought ; in 
a metaphor the two subjects are kept distinct in 
the thought only, not in the expression," is the 
definition that has been proposed of the difference 
between the two. Like many definitions, it is not 
a particularly exact one, and will be best supple- 
mented by laying before you various examples of 
either figure. 

And first you will observe that, as a rule, similes 
are found only in poetry, metaphors in prose and * 
poetry alike ; and of the various kinds of prose 
most of all in oratory, the orator being next of kin 
to the poet. And, indeed, a first-rate orator often 
displays far more poetry than a third-rate poet. 
Again, we must not confuse simile with allegory or 
parable : the latter is a perfect tale complete in it- 
(162) 



SIMILE AND METAPHOR. 163 

self, dependent solely upon the imagination of the 
reader to supply its key ; whereas a simile makes 
little or no demand upon our imagination — from 
the outset its counterpart is openly announced, and 
all that is required of the reader is to judge of the 
fitness of the comparison. In saying that similes 
are peculiar to poetry, I do not mean that they are 
never employed in prose ; generally not more than 
a dozen or twenty words in length, but sparingly, 
so that you may read a good deal of excellent 
English prose and never find one ; there is one 
known exception in one of those two whom S. T. 
Coleridge considers one of the four great English 
prose writers ; and his similes are so beautiful that 
I will extract one before we pass on to consider 
their place in poetry. In his Holy Dying, Jeremy 
Taylor is speaking of considerations preparatory 
to death, and reminding us how great is the change 
between " the sprightfulness of youth and the fair 
cheeks and full eyes of childhood, from the vigor- 
ousness of five and twenty to the hollo wness and dead 
paleness, the loathsomeness of a three-days' burial." 
To illustrate this thought he continues: ''but so 
have I seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of 
his hood ; and at first it was fair asthe morning, and 



164 SIMILE AND METAPHOR. 

full with the dew of heaven as a lamb's fleece ; but 
when a rude breath had forced open its virgin mod- 
esty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe 
retirements, it began to put on darkness and to 
decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly 
age ; it bowed the head and broke its stalk ; and 
at night, having lost some of its leaves and all its 
beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and out- 
worn faces." 

You must have noticed similes of all kinds, some 
of them of equal beauty and force, in the great 
classical authors. Homer goes so far as to illus- 
trate the hosts of the Greeks arming for battle by 
five different similes in immediate succession to one 
another. Virgil has many, and some singularly 
apposite similes, expressed in language equally 
nervous and dignified. You may learn too, inci- 
dentally, a good deal of the genius of a poet by 
his similes. Whereas Homer's are almost always 
from natural objects — the crane, the horse, the lion, 
and boar, or the grander scenes of nature, the un- 
dulating corn-field, the blazing forest, the heaving 
ocean, — Yirgil not only seeks his (as all poets 
must) from natural objects, but presses also into 
his service city scenes, as the turbulent populace 



. SIMILE AND METAPHOR. 165 

and the commanding orator ; nor does he disdain 
the merry children's play around the whirling top. 
To say that simile and metaphor are two of the 
purest ornaments of poetry, is to assume that 
Shakspeare gives us instances innumerable of the 
happiest application of them : in the mouths of 
some of his characters the exuberance is perfectly 
startling : take, for instance, a speech of Ulysses, 
" from whose mouth words flowed sweeter than 
honey," in the third act of Troilus ; it is the 
speech beginning *' Time hath, my lord, a wallet at 
his back." He starts with a very bold figure of 
speech, allegorical rather than metaphorical, in 
which Time is personified with "wallet crammed 
with alms for oblivion :" no sooner is this figure 
ended than a simile is introduced, in which retire- 
ment from the eyes of men is compared to a mail- 
coat hung over the grave of a dead warrior : then 
metaphor upon metaphor succeeds, almost every 
one bringing forth a fresh one, followed by two 
more similes in which the rush of claimants for 
popular applause is compared to the rising tide, 
and the retired favorite is represented as a found- 
ered horse left as pavement for the abject rear. 

15 



166 SIMILE AND METAPHOR. 

Then " Time is like a fashionable host :" then fol- 
lows a marvelous richness of metaphors, numerous 
enough to have supplied a second-rate dramatist 
for an act, instead of lavishing them upon a single 
speech. 

By this speech of Ulysses alone, you can well 
judge of the power of simile in the hands of a 
master ; but these were all very short — too short 
for beauty — but well suited to the situation ; the 
" many-counseled" chief trying to carry away the 
resentful warrior in his torrent of impetuous elo- 
quence. Where, however, the occasion is not so 
pressing, and there is suitable time and opportunity 
for a more deliberate speech, see how well Shak- 
speare can prolong a simile through half a speech 
of forty lines, and yet not wear it threadbare. In 
Henry V. act i. he compares a well-ordered state 
to the kingdom of the honey-bees, dilating upon 
their officers, merchants, soldiers, emperor, me- 
chanics, porters, the sad -eyed justice, the pale ex- 
ecutor ; and far from feeling overburdened by this 
lengthened simile, we readily greet no less than 
four more in the next few lines : — the arrows meet- 
ing in one mark — the roads in one town — the 
streams in one sea — the lines in one dial. You 



SIMILE AND METAPHOR. I6t 

will find in Henry VIII., act iii. scene 2, a good 
illustration of simile and metaphor combined, where 
Wolsey laments his past ambition in lines of the 
deepest pathos ; the lines are in the speech begin- 
ning " So, farewell to the little good you bear me." 
In one line he introduces and completes the simile 
in which he compares himself to "little wanton 
boys that swim on bladders :" all the rest is meta- 
phor ; " the sea of glory, beyond my depth ;" " the 
breaking of the high-blown pride;" "the mercy of 
the rude stream that must forever hide me." 

Knowing, as we do, Milton's tastes — his love for 
music, his vast learning, biblical and classical, his 
great experiences in the world, his love of travel, 
and the deep harmony between his mind and the 
book of nature — we are the less astonished at find- 
ing a great variety and wealth of similes in his 
poems : you would be surprised to see how soon 
the list mounts up, if you made one under the dif- 
ferent heads of classical, natural, and biblical sub- 
jects. Of the first you will find a capital instance 
in book ii. line 520, Paradise Lost: 

"As at the Olympian games or Pythian fields, 
Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal 
With rapid wings, or fronted brigads form." 



168 SIMILE AND METAPHOR. 

And in the line immediately following you will see 
a manifest recollection of Yirgil's 

"Armorum sonitum toto Germania coelo 
Audiit," 

expanded into 

"As when to warn proud cities war appears 
Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush 
To battle in the clouds, before each van 
Prick forth the aery heights, and crush their spears, 
Till thickest legions close." 

In his similes taken from nature, where not di- 
rectly copied from Homer or some other classic, 
you will find a vast preponderance of images de- 
rived either from astronomy or navigation, either 
the skies or the sea. For the former we can easily 
account ; his visit to the learned Galileo had made 
an ineffaceable impression upon his youthful mem- 
ory. To explain the latter, we must have recourse 
to the innate admiration of all our island race for 
the sea, and the particular sympathy which it has 
excited in the hearts of our most passionate poets. 
Milton actually records his visit to the great Italian 
astronomer in Paradise Lost, book i. line 285, 
where he compares Satan's shield to 



SIMILE AND METAPHOR. 169 

"the moon, whose orb 
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 
At evening, from the top of Fesol6 
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, 
Rivers, or mountains, in his spotty globe." 

Another example you will find in book ii. line 

710: 

"Satan stood 
Unterrified, and like a comet burned. 
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge 
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair 
Shakes pestilence and war.'' 

Among his similes from the sea you will observe 
Satan floating on the burning lake compared, in 
book i. line 200, to 

" Leviathan, whom God of all his works 
Created hugest that swim the northern stream ; 
Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam, 
The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff, 
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, 
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind 
Moors by his side, under the lee, while night 
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays." 

Where you will recognize another version of that 
delicious tale of our boyhood, the voyages of Sin- 
bad the Sailor. 

15* 



ItO SIMILE AND METAPHOR. 

It is not merely the sea that Milton delights in 
— "the barren sea," as Homer calls it — but the 
human interest connected with it ; perhaps in fond 
recollection of his lost Lycidas, Milton so often 
connects the sailor's hopes and cares and fears with 
the glorious element he makes his home upon. 

In book ii. line 285, the murmur of the assem- 
bly is 

"As wlien hollow rocks retain 

The sound of blustering winds, which all night long 
Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull 
Seafaring men o'erwatch'd, where bark by chance 
Or pinnace anchors in a craggy bay 
After the tempest." 

In book V. line 261, you have similes from both 
the sky and sea successively: 

"As when by night the glass 
Of Galileo, less assured, observes 
Imagin'd lands and regions in the moon ; 
Or pilot from amid the Cyclades, 
Delos or Samos first appearing, kens 
A cloudy spot." 

I could quote you many more examples ; but, if 
you are interested in the subject, you can readily 
find them for yourself; and if you are not, it would 
be mere waste of time and space to continue a proof 
already concluded. I will only finally point out to 



SIMILE AND METAPHOR. 171 

you what a halo of poetry Milton threw round what 
were modern scientific discoveries in his days, show- 
ing that modern science, instead of diminishing, 
enlarges the field of poetry almost inimitably. In 
describing the uniform and yet silent growth of the 
vast hall of Pandemonium, in book i. line 709, he 
paints it most vividly by the comparison, 

"As in an organ, from one blast of wind 
To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes." 

And in book iv. line 814, he makes his reader 
realize the effect of the touch of Ithuriel's spear 
upon the fallen angel : 

"As when a spark 
Lights on a heap of nitrous powder, laid 
Fit for the tun, some magazine to store 
Against a rumor'd war, the smutty grain. 
With sudden blaze diffused, inflames the air, — 
So started up in his own shape the fiend." 

If you would care to investigate further the effect 
of modern scientific discovery on poetry, read by 
all means the eloquent and majestic peroration (I 
must call it, rather than conclusion) of Professor 
Tyndal's book on " Heat ;" and if you would see 
how the Professor's belief has already been carried 
out into practice, you will find instances passim in 
Tennyson's In Memoriam, 



112 SIMILE AND METAPHOR. 

I have drawn so many illustrations from our 
greatest, that there is less need to seek for fresh 
ones from our well-filled ranks of minor poets : 
you will, as a rule, find the use of similes a good 
test of the author's study of, and also of your own 
appreciation of and delight in natural scenes and ob- 
jects. We might assume, d priori, that Pope and 
his school knew little enough of the realities of 
nature from their weak, paltry, and untrue descrip- 
tions of it, from their similes borrowed secondhand 
from greater poets, and so villainously tampered 
with that you might think they were not describing 
the works of nature, but of one of " nature's journey- 
men." But with a healthier school a truer style 
reappears ; and from the days of Cowper, Burns, 
and Goldsmith, to Wordsworth and Tennyson, 
there have never been wanting men who pene- 
trated within the sanctuary of nature, and preached 
aloud the glorious lessons therein learnt, on the 
temple steps, to the multitude outside. In Burns 
we meet again the same prodigality of similes so 
noticeable in Shakspeare, and so impossible with 
any but poetic genius of almost the highest order. 
To make us realize the fleeting character of Tarn 
O'Shanter's midnight revelry he tells us : 



SIMILE AND METAPHOR. 113 

"But pleasures are like poppies spread, 
You seize the flower, the bloom is shed ; 
Or like the snow falls in the river, 
A moment white, then melts forever ; 
Or like the borealis race. 
That flit ere you can point their place ; 
Or like the rainbow's lovely form 
Evanishing amid the storm." 

Hardly ever was a more perfect poetic image con- 
ceived than that of the instantaneous extinguishing 
of evanescent loveliness, the snow crystals in the 
river — unless Burns's own simile of sorrow deepen- 
ing with time be better still : 

"Time but the impression deeper makes, 
As streams their channels deeper wear." 

And to remind you that Burns's spirit and poetic 
insight is not extinct yet, I give one more extract ; 
and it is a worthy conclusion to my subject. We 
began with Shakspeare's similes ; and Shakspeare 
himself could not have imagined one more true, or 
expressed in language more sublime than this. 
Though some years have passed now, you can rec- 
ollect the shock that came so suddenly that, though 
other national events of that date will be forgotten, 



174 SIMILE AND METAPHOR. 

it will be recalled when you are old, the fearful 
avalanche of woe which fell upon her, 

" Over all whose realms to their last isle, 
Commingled with the gloom of imminent war, 
The shadow of his loss moved like eclipse, 
Darkening the world." 



XIV. 

ON TENNYSON. 

YOU tell me that, though you much wish it 
were otherwise, you cannot make out what 
Tennyson means in many of his shorter poems, let 
alone the longer ones. I must honestly reply that 
I am not altogether surprised at your difficulties ; 
but would, at the same time, beg you to ask your- 
self whether a great poet, a philosopher who writes 
for men, can possibly be comprehended by any one 
at the mature age of eighteen. You would smile 
if I asked you for a correct analysis of a church of 
Michael Angelo, au allegory of Albert Diirer, or a 
sonata of Beethoven ; and yet music and sculpture 
and drawing are the universal language of all 
civilized nations. The real fact is, in order to 
understand a great work, in whatever material its 
mighty thoughts may be enshrined, you need either 
special training or the experience of some years of 

(Its) 



1Y6 ON TENNYSON. 

life acting upon a naturally sensitive imagination. 
If you want poetry that you can comprehend at a 
glance, I can refer you to plenty, and that by most 
voluminous writers. The large school represented 
by Dr. Watts and Mrs. Hemans will never draw 
upon you for much thought or study, but it will 
hardly supply you with more than superficial en- 
tertainment. If you would draw living water from 
th,e wells of Shakspeare or Wordsworth or Tenny- 
son, you must not complain if the wells are deep. 

But there are mere surface difficulties in Tenny- 
son, which a few words of explanation will remove. 
His poems, you may have noticed, are cast in a 
mould mainly lyrical and descriptive ; but beneath 
this outward appearance you will observe, on 
closer inspection, a form essentially dramatic. 
Lochsley Hall is purely unintelligible, except as a 
dramatic composition disguised in epic form. 
Once observe this peculiarity of the poet, and 
many a difficulty will straightway vanish : the ice 
that lies crusted over the depths beneath is every- 
where more or less transparent ; and they are real 
depths beneath, full, some of them, of truths pro- 
found and awful — lessons on which we may well 
ponder in the spirit the poet thus describes : 



ON TENNYSON. 11T 

"How pure in heart and sound in head, 
With what divine affections bold, 
Must be the man whose thoughts would hold 
An hour's communion with the dead." 

Turn to the Vision of Sin, and see such a lesson. 
First read it through, and you will probably under- 
stand next to nothing of it. But notice its com- 
position : it is in five parts. Examine the meters ; 
there are three : the first, the third, and the fifth 
parts are in the same, the ordinary ten-syllable — 
" Pope's meter," as it is called ; the second part 
begins with the same, but soon changes into an 
irregular lyric meter, where the rhythm of each 
line is in great measure dependent on the ideas 
which are to be conveyed in it ; the fourth part is 
in short meter, in quatrains, the alternate lines 
carefully rhymed. The poet calls his poem " a 
vision;" and there is, no doubt, an additional ob- 
scurity in the allegory of most of it, especially when 
contrasted with the dreadful realism of the fourth 
part. He sees a youth riding toward a palace- 
gate; his horse has wings, for it represents his 
soul winged with buoyant hope and noble aspira- 
tions ; but the heavy rider — the evil passions of 
sense, and sensuality — keep him down. From the 

16 



nS ON TENNYSON. 

palace comes a child of sin : at once he follows 
her, without an effort to shun the danger. The 
rising of the fountain they await is the return of 
satiated appetite ; their dreamy, listless, worthless 
existence is well pictured in the simile, 

"As when the sun, a orescent of eclipse, 
Dreams over lakes and lawns and isles and capes." 

And now you must pause for a minute, and re- 
member the extreme difficulty of the subject the 
poet has proposed to himself: he has to publish 
that which will not bear publicity ; the prophet 
must uplift his voice against sin, and yet not offend 
the delicacy of modesty, nor even the fastidiousness 
of refinement. And if you will now carefully read 
the second part, you will, I think, be equally 
charmed and surprised at the skill with which this 
task is accomplished. 

Notice particularly the aid the poet brings from 
meter. Strict lyric meters are essentially passion- 
ate. Here the lines wonderfully express the pas- 
sion of voluptuousness ; yet there is not an image 
that disgusts, not a thought that could insult the 
most delicate sensitiveness. Nor is it a mere 
word-picture — indistinct, and therefore unreal : 



ON TENNYSON. 119 

the all-absorbing power of passion, the absolute 
slavery and degradation of its victim, the total 
loss of self-respect, and forgetfulness of all duty, 
are portrayed in a gorgeousness of language un- 
paralleled elsewhere, I think, even in Tennyson's 
poetry. 

And now, in the third part, we return to the 
meter of the first again ; and let me, in passing, 
call your attention to the fact that there is a great 
difference in the rhythm of the lines between this 
and Pope's meter : with him, and usually, the sense 
concludes with the rhyme ; here, as in Keats's 
Endymion, the sense runs as it were athwart the 
rhyme, concluding often in the middle of a line, as 
blank-verse does : thereby is added some of the 
dignity of blank-verse to the natural richness of 
rhyme ; for truths noble and solemn demand a 
noble meter and solemn language : diamonds 
should not be set in any other than the purest 
gold. 

And now the poet's " vision " closes on the scene 
of luxury and sensuality, and the degradation of all 
that is good and true in man, and opens on the 
grand daily operations of nature as they march 
stately on their course, unmoved by man's sin and 



180 ON TENNYSON. 

folly, bearing silent witness, whether we will hear 
or whether we will forbear, to a spirit of majesty 
and purity and might, and to scenes of glory of 
which even they in all their magnificence are but a 
type. Every morning ("day by day we magnify 
Thee ") God shows his awfulness to man in the 
rosy flames of dawn, by the profligate and the 
reveler unheeded ; and then from those same 
heights whence comes the daily witness of God's 
presence and majesty descends also daily nearer 
the cold, hueless, formless vapor of death, and that 
too moves on unheeded by the besotted reveler. 
And here do not fail to mark a touch of nature 
seemingly thrown in by accident, but which mate- 
rially deepens the impression of a terrible reality. 
The poet struggles, as men do in dreams, to speak 
and warn the madman ; but, as in dreams, he can- 
not : " no man may deliver his brother, nor make 
agreement unto God for him." 

And now the scene of the vision is again changed. 
The youth who had ridden the horse with wings, 
and so entered the gates of the palace of pleasure 
and sin, leaves the gates a gray and gap-toothed 
man, as lean as death ; what he had become in 
character he tells us himself in the fourth part of 



ON TENNYSON. 181 

• 

the poem. The meter changes again, following 
always the current of the ideas. The youth has 
passed through the fullest gratification of every 
sensual passion into a cruel and intense misan- 
thropy: he needs the sharp, short decision of the 
meter to express his bitter bon-raots, his gibes and 
sneers at all that is lofty and noble, and he avails 
himself of the advantages of the meter to the full ; 
scorn and insult to the servants who come out to 
take his horse and lead its master into the inn, 
sneers at all the world in turn, at name and fame 
and friendship, at virtue, at patriotism, at freedom 
and tyranny alike ; not a gibe without some truth 
in it, and yet in all of them the perverted truth, 
which is the worst lie of all. There is ability, 
plenty of it, a sad perversion of the intellect, in the 
old man's mockery and scoffing ; he has widely ob- 
served mankind, both as individuals and as nations, 
and believes, or rather says he believes, the sum of 
all to be, that 

"Every heart, when sifted well, 
Is a clot of warmer dust, 
Mixed with cunning sparks of hell." 

To show you how the true meaning of this poem 
has been misunderstood, I may mention that I 

16* 



182 ON TENNYSON. 

• 

have seen extracts made from tliis old cyme's solil- 
oquies and set to four-part music (and very good 
music too) as a drinking song. 

You have nowthe key to the whole of the fourth 
part. I need not analyze at length individual pas- 
sages in it ; you can see and weigh well enough 
for yourself the epicurean refrain of the song, 
" Fill the cup and fill the can," etc., the gradual 
passage from mockery to coarseness, and the rev- 
eling in all that is loathsome ; the sneers at the 
hopes of youth ; an attitude toward Death at once 
defiant and reckless ; and when you have noted all 
this, do not leave it without reflecting that this is 
no fancy picture, neither is it a sermon written to 
adapt itself to a text ; it is a lesson clad in lan- 
guage of undying strength and beauty, taught by 
a layman, one of the most gifted and deeply 
thoughtful men of our age, who warns us here how 
a life of self-indulgence must end in an old age of 
bitter misanthropy and selfish disbelief in all that 
is good. Nor is it merely the vice of the old man 
that is so appalling ; it is even more his ignorance 
of all the better part of man. The whole vast 
world of truth and honor, generosity and purity, 
is to him inconceivable — he never moved in it ; and 



ON TENNYSON. 183 

thinking that his own little circle of sin and self- 
indulgence is "the world," he scoffs at all beyond 
that circle as impossible or hypocritical. This is 
a useful lesson to the so-called wisdom of men of 
the world, as they are termed, the " Sir Mulberry 
Hawkes" of society: their knowledge is no doubt very 
perfect as far as it goes, but how far is that ? to the 
purlieus of riot and gambling and vice, and what 
they impudently call "the world." What can such 
as they, what could this aged voluptuary here, un- 
derstand of the spirit that animated the crew and 
soldiers of the Birkenhead, who put the women and 
children into the boats, and themselves sank into 
the cruel South Atlantic waves, swarming with 
sharks, each man standing in his rank as calmly as 
on parade? Conceive the impertinence and igno- 
rance of a man who tells us with a sneer that vir- 
tue, friendship, honor, love of country, are but 
hollow mockeries, while we see a Garibaldi win- 
ning a whole country in the field, and then con- 
tentedly retiring to his little island farm ; while not 
a week passes without its history of generous 
(often fatal) self-exposure to rescue the drowning 
from a wreck or the suffocating from a mine. 
These, remember, are your "men of the world," 



184 ON TENNYSON. 

who ask us to believe this misanthropic trash. 
You have heard perhaps of the beetle who, as he 
crawled across the pavement of St. Paul's, senten- 
tiously remarked, '' No, he could not at all approve 
of the architecture of the building, there were far 
too many cracks in the pavement, and his legs fell 
into them." Your ancient roue takes about as 
extended a view of life, and the mixture of good 
and evil of which that life is compounded. Would 
you have sounder, juster, truer views of life ? Sur- 
vey rather a wider horizon than that which limited 
this old man's view. Would you possess a judg- 
ment unpoisoned, and a mental vision undistorted ? 
then live purely in youth. The old misanthrope 
did but reap in his old age the fruits of that which 
he had sown in his youth ; it could not be other- 
wise. 

There is a stately grandeur in the conclusion of 
the poem ; the meter again abruptly changes with 
the sense, the last faint echoes of mockery die away 
as the mountain range again appears before us ; 
this time Death is at work with its subtle chemistry, 
producing lower life out of the dissolution of no- 
bler things ; while through the air, above all this 
decay, ring the questions which every thoughtful 



ON TENNYSON. 185 

man must often have asked himself in vain. The 
Saviour's great command, ''Judge not, that ye be 
not judged," has lost happily none of its ancient 
force yet. First mercy pleads, " It was a crime of 
sense, mere sensual indulgence; it brought its own 
punishment, for it faded and perished as time fled 
on ; surely he suffered in this world enough in 
losing that for which alone he lived." The reply 
is obvious, "The crime is more than you think, not 
of sense merely ; it was that originally, but grew 
to be one of malice, — a crime of the will, not one 
of the mere passions." To this again the re- 
joinder comes, subtler but not less true; it admits 
the truth of the accusation, but pleads extenuating 
circumstances : "After all, some sparks of life are 
left ; are they to be quenched ? His very bitter- 
ness and cynicism prove the existence of some 
grain of conscience left smouldering below," Fain 
would we know what lies " behind the veil;" often 
would our curiosity, or a nobler feeling of inquiry 
into the world beyond, demand "is there any 
hope ?" But still the reply comes (happily, no 
doubt, for us), understood by none. But we have 
still the Father's works to contemplate ; still many 
a lesson to learn from the rain which falls equally 



186 ON TENNYSON. 

on the good and bad alike, the life which is given 
to all to use or misuse as they will ; still, above 
the vice and riot of our luxurious cities, above too 
the questionings of the philosopher, the self-tor- 
menting spirit of modern inquiry, 

*' On the glimmering limit far withdrawn 
God makes himself an awful rose of dawn." 



XV. 

WHAT'S THE USE OF SHAKSPEARE? 

A/^OU mentioned the other day that you did not 
-■- see what practical use there was in Shak- 
speare. Of course a good deal must depend upon 
the very ambiguous term use. We should prob- 
ably attach quite diflferent meanings ; but I will 
suppose that you mean to value his plays, not 
merely by the low standard of how much money 
or money's worth can be made out of the study of 
his works, but what lessons he gives us for the 
practical life of this practical age. 

First, I must protest against this as a test of 
more than a very small part of Shakspeare's 
worth ; and then, with this protest entered, I will 
take him at your standard, and show you, I think, 
one very important lesson on the spot. You re- 
member our laughing very heartily at an account of 
the hustings performances — speech there was none 
— of a poor young gentleman brought forward at 
the last general election to represent a Southern 

(187) 



188 what's the use of shakspeare ? 

county ? How one of an unsjmpathizing audience 
cruelly remarked "that he 'ad more in his 'at" 
(viz. his written speech) " than he 'ad in his 'ead :" 
how, on his declaring with perfect truth that he 
could not speak, they good-naturedly rejoined, 
"Give us a song then, governor." Well, what 
was very funny to us was equally distressing to 
him and his friends. You may perhaps be on the 
same hustings in a few years' time. I hope you 
may never be in his humiliating position. Let us 
see if Shakspeare can help to save you from at- 
taining to " such bad eminence" as this unhappy 
candidate found it. Now it so happens that 
Shakspeare, who has given us several master- 
pieces of debate, has given us at least two hustings 
speeches ; one as bad as a man of any note could 
make ; the other, the reply, as excellent as it was 
successful ; and I will venture to assert that any 
man who could apply the principles on which 
Mark Antony framed his speech to the mob, would 
be able to carry a large portion of his hearers 
with him, even in the teeth of their own convictions. 
The two speeches are in Julius Caesar, the third 
act and second scene. Both are to the same crowd ; 
but Brutus has this great advantage, that he 



what's the use of shakspeare? 189 

addresses a not unsympathizing audience. The 
deepest-rooted of any of the baser feelings of our 
nature is envy ; and to say that Caesar was great — 
great in almost any sense of the word — is to say 
that he was largely envied. Antony had a very 
up-hill game to play. As we are to regard this 
from a strictly practical point of view, I shall do 
no more than notice the literary distinction Shak- 
speare has made between the prose of Brutus and 
the poetry of Antony. It could not have been 
written otherwise with truth; but that we must not 
dwell upon now, only I must beg you to notice 
that poetry itself has more to do with practicatl 
life than you think of. There was no prose, ex- 
cept the absence of meter, about the noblest pas- 
sages of the speeches of Fox, the two Pitts, Sher- 
idan, and Burke. As you have to learn rather 
than unlearn, we will not dwell long on Brutus's 
speech. Read it through, and then ask yourselves 
if ever mortal man was influenced by such a hodge- 
podge of cold, lifeless antitheses. One would think 
it was a pedantic rhetorician, not a statesman, 
speaking, or rather weighing out his miserable 
word-clauses ounce by ounce. " Hear me for my 
cause," he says. Now for something neat and 

11 



190 what's the use of shakspeare? 

pretty, and very nice to match that, antithetical if 
possible. "Be silent that you may hear." To 
criticise one sentence is to criticise all. Was ever 
human heart aroused by such heartless stuff? 
Look on a few lines, the same silly rhetorical 
prettiness. " Csesar lives — you are slaves ; Caesar 
dies — you are free men ;" the strained climax, "As 
Caesar loved me, I weep for him ; as he was for- 
tunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honor 
him ; but as he was ambitious, I slew him." And 
so on with the same dreary commonplaces to the 
end. But poor as the speech is, he has a potent 
ally in the vulgar hatred of tyranny among a 
mob who have not brains enough to see that the 
days of senatorial tyranny and misgovernment were 
ended, that an autocratic tyranny there must be — 
if not of the great and wise, then of the man of 
narrow heart and feeble brain. 

And now let us picture the scene in our imagina- 
tion. Antony ascends the rostra, i.e. the busting ; 
around him a boisterous sea of faces, each in his 
own way more or less violently expressive of hopes 
and feelings the very opposite of the orator's. The 
few articulate words that are heard above the 
general uproar are to the effect that Cassar was a 



what's the use of shakspeare? 191 

tyrant, and ** we are bless'd that Rome is rid of 
hira," and "'twere best lie speak no harm of Brutus 
here." Yet, if you look on to the next street 
scene, these same ardent partisans of Brutus and 
haters of Csesar are tearing the conspirators to 
shreds, and building up a funeral pile for the body 
of the great emperor. Never did orator ascend 
hustings with the chances more seriously against 
not only his success, but his own personal safety; 
never did orator descend more superlatively vic- 
torious. What wrought this marvelous change ? 
When Pitt was on a visit to Paris during the short 
peace of 1783, he was asked by some French states- 
man, " How can a man like Fox, a man of pleas- 
ure, ruined by the dice-box and the turf, have such 
weight with you in England ?" He replied, " You 
have never been under the wand of the magician." 
And yet Antony's secret is no profound one, though 
profoundly hidden from statesmen and orators of 
the Brutus school. " One touch of nature makes 
the whole world kin." Appeal to men's feelings, 
the massive deep-laid foundation of all sympathy 
between us all. Antony appeals in turn to their 
appreciation of friendship, their sense of pity, their 
curiosity (a very potent spell with all, especially 



192 what's the use of shakspeare? 

the uneducated), their gratitude, their military 
pride, their hatred of in,a:ratitude : and JSnally he 
carries their feelings away by the mute eloquence 
of the visible, — Csesar's rent mantle and bleeding 
wounds, exciting to the highest pitch all the feel- 
ings previously appealed to, on the principle well 
embodied in the well-known Horatian lines : 

"Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures 
Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus" 

It is but the few who can appreciate choice lan- 
guage, apt illustration, delicate satire, gorgeous 
metaphor, and the other graces of oratory, which 
must be acquired to enable you to address with 
weight an educated audience ; but the merest mob 
— and I am speaking of a hustings address to a 
mob — can appreciate what they see. The warmest 
hearts and most ardent feelings are as often found 
under fustian as under broadcloth ; any ordinary 
crowd can and will heartily love and honor friend- 
ship expressed even for an enemy ; they can and 
will pity the fallen, respect gratitude, and hate the 
ungrateful, even if he has benefited them; for 
there is a strong rough sense of justice and honor 
to which one never appeals wholly in vain. 



what's the use of shakspeare? 193 

Antony's task is twofold ; for he has first to dis- 
arm the mob of their anger against Caesar, to dis- 
abuse them of their admiration of Brutus's con- 
duct, and secondly to arouse them (if possible) to 
expel the conspirators bodily from Rome, and 
leave the coast clear] for the operations of his, the 
Ccesarean party. Notice the extreme caution of 
the opening words: "I come to bury Csesar, not 
to praise him;" he disarms their resentment by dis- 
claiming all idea of a formal funeral laudatory 
oration. Notice the subtle suggestion in the sev- 
enth line of the possibility of Brutus being mis- 
taken about Csesar's ambition : "i/ it were so, it 
were a grievous fault." He does not venture at 
first to do more than suggest the possibility of 
error on Brutus's part, but leaves the oily sugges- 
tion to do its work, merely reminding them that 
Csesar had grievously paid for it, if Brutus and 
the other honorable men were right. But in the 
thirteenth line of his speech he strikes a chord 
which he knows will ring deep and true through 
the hearts of the people: "He was my friend; 
faithful and just to me." I at least, as a private 
man, may and will say so much. He may have 
been ambitious or not, but he was my friend — 

IT* 



194 what's the use of shakspeare? 

faithful and just; that you can appreciate and 
honor even in a tyrant. 

And they did appreciate the feeling, and listened 
quietly while the cunning orator cautiously began 
" spargere voces in vulgura ambiguas," and suggest 
that it was no ambition to fill the "general^^ cof- 
fers, to weep when the "poor have cried;" to 
'* thrice refuse the kingly crown ;" closing his state- 
ment by the prudent disclaimer of disproving 
Brutus's words, but basing his assertions on the 
inexorable logic of facts : " I do speak what I do 
know." The nail is driven well home. He sees 
the crowd moved by his eloquence ; one more blow 
and Brutus's work will be undone. The crowd, 
never tolerant of the praise of others, are getting 
well nauseated by the continued repetition of the 
honorable character of Brutus and the rest, as 
contrasted with the facts which Antony " did 
know." Once excite their feelings, their reason is 
more than half convinced, and all is gained. He 
carries them back to past days — days which none 
can think of without emotion. " You all did love 
him once," then why not mourn at least for him 
now ? I do not ask you for more ; with broken 
voice the skillful orator stammers through the next 



what's the use of shakspeare? 195 

two lines, and then stops, overpowered by his 

feelings : 

"Si vis me flere, dolendum est 
Primum ipsi tibi." 

The crowd is evidently moved, but still uncer- 
tain ; however, their former belief in Brutus's in- 
fallibility is wrecked : " If thou consider rightly of 
the matter, Caesar has had great wrong ;" " If it be 
found so, some will dear abide it;" all point to 
which way the wind is setting : Antony has se- 
cured their feelings, and his game is safe. But yet 
he needs caution ; the very anxiety that the crowd 
show to listen proves that though they have lost 
faith in Brutus, they are not yet converted to An- 
tony. Notice, then, with what consummate skill 
the orator excites first their pity — picturing Caesar 
yesterday so great, to-day so low. Widely spread 
as envy is, pity is — at least among all minds but 
the basest — as deeply planted. Notice the wise 
introduction of the idea of mutiny in a conditional 
sentence, as before he introduced the doubt about 
Caesar's ambition : " If I were disposed to stir your 
hearts and minds to mutiny and rage." Notice the 
strong appeal to the spirit of curiosity, as strong 
a passion in many, especially uneducated, minds : 



196 what's the use of shakspeare? 

"his will, which, pardon me, I do not mean to 
read ;" how he dare not read it for fear of enlisting 
their feelings too strongly on Caesar's behalf; how 
cleverly he disclaims, as if casually, the important 
fact that they, the people, were his heirs : and then 
observe the almost undisguised scorn in which he 
now speaks of the honorable men, anticipating the 
reply from some — 'Hhey were traitors;" exacting 
from all the universal cry of " the will, the testa- 
ment 1" He is now on the full flood-tide of suc- 
cess, and has only to consider how he may safely 
steer his ship into port ; yet he will excite the 
raging waves more : his object is sedition, mutiny, 
and rage ; death to the conspirators, fire to their 
homes. 

He now appeals victoriously, in no timid uncer- 
tain note as before, to their pity for Caesar. He 
makes them stand with him round the body ; he 
kindles again the old Roman worship of military 
distinctions, as he holds up the scarred and rent 
mantle, and reminds them in one line .of his own 
presence too at one of the hardest fought of all 
Csesar's great battles, " the day he overcame the 
Nervii." What recollections must have thrilled 
through them of the oft-repeated news of fresh 



what's the use op shakspeare? 19 1 

victories won, fresh provinces torn from their he- 
reditary enemy the Gaul ; of countries, before un- 
trodden by a Roman, made part of the imperial 
domain — that domain of which they were the lords. 
Then picture the impassioned gestures of the ora- 
tor as he described, carefully prolonging the account 
in each detail, the separate wounds of each conspir- 
ator. And see the deepening fury on each swarthy 
southern face, the wildness of revenge which south- 
ern nations alone are capable of feeling or express- 
ing. "'Now you weep," as you look but at the 
mantle. He has excited all this burst of passion 
by the dead garment alone ; now come and regard 
the late living body which it contained. 

But the work must not be done by halves ; the 
mob must be possessed with the conviction of the 
wortidessness of the conspirators, and the over- 
whelming claim that Caesar has upon their love. 
How inimitable is the suggestion, that as this 
assassination could not have been done on public 
grounds, there must have been private ones, 
arousing by a line the latent distrust of the gov- 
erned for the governing : " What private griefs they 
have, alas I I know not." While his disclaiming 
all eloquence such as Brutus had would be almost 



198 what's the use of shakspeare? 

ludicrous, did we not remember that an excited 
crowd will believe anything. One more appeal to 
their pity : " Sweet Caesar's wounds, poor, poor 
dumb mouths," followed by the reminder of the 
will and the announcement of its contents, and the 
successful orator may well hug himself with the 
thought that " mischief is well a-foot," and be 
reckless of its consequences. 

I could add not a little upon the words put into 
the mouths of the different individuals among the 
audience, the very "mobile vulgus ;" but though 
there is a very good study of the worshipful many- 
headed (under which appellation I should include 
myself or you, if we were found shouting a modern 
equivalent to " Great is Diana of the Ephesians," 
and quite ignorant of " why we had all come to- 
gether"), yet I have in this essay proposed to set 
before you one consideration only ; and I think you 
will admit that I have been as good as my word — 
that I have given you reason to think that Shak- 
speare is not altogether useless for practical life, 
but would teach you one thing at least, how to talk 
a mob over into accordance with your own views ; 
in other words, how to make a capital speech from 
the hustings. 



XVL 

ON NOVELS.^ 

WHEN, about a hundred years ago, a worthy 
country rector wrote a series of letters to 
his pupils, one of which was on Novels, he could 
not but speak ill of them, both as regarded their 
intrinsic worth and tendencies : and any one who 
is at all acquainted with the works to which he re- 
fers, will, I think, in the main, indorse his con- 
demnation. Happily, since he wrote, we have 
seen a totally new school of novelists arise ; and 
so far from condemning the works of a great ma- 
jority of them, I heartily wish I could induce you 
to read them much more than you do ; and this I 
feel not merely in the despairing spirit in which a 
pater-familias is reported to have ejaculated, " If 
my boys would read anything — if they would only 
read Punch, I should have better hopes of them ;" 
but rather as believing that a great amount of real 
and valuable information is contained in them — 

(199) 



200 ON NOVELS. 

some, perhaps, which you will hardly find else- 
where. Now, of course, as of most things, "there 
are novels and novels ;" and I know that there is 
more trash introduced into public life in this cos- 
tume than in any other — more history falsified, 
truth caricatured, impossibilities created, life dis- 
torted. Yet, on the other hand, there is in the 
works of the best (and they are happily very nu- 
merous) such admirable sketches of life both past 
and present, such happy analysis of character, so 
many beauties of style, that we may well say of 
them what Hamlet said a play should be, that they 
" hold as 'twere a mirror up to nature, to show vir- 
tue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the 
very age and body of the time his form and pres- 
sure." There is no young man who is to move in 
your position in life who would not be better armed 
to play his part in life well by knowing two or three 
of Thackeray's novels well ; he would there see at 
least " how scorn was shown her own image ;" and 
might start with a sounder estimate and truer value 
of meanness, and flattery, and self conceit, and 
everything untruthful. 

Not to burden you with many names, and in 
order to simplify my remarks as much as possible, 



ON NOVELS. 201 

I will confine myself to the three great novelists 
of the century — the three to whom I think all 
others would concede the palm, or whom they 
would consider the best after themselves — the 
value put upon Themistocles by the confederate 
generals after Salamis. The great duke of Marl- 
borough used to say that all he knew of English 
history was contained in Shakspeare ; and on the 
same principle he would, no doubt, had the Wizard 
of the North then lived, have added to his store a 
good deal more of history from Scott's novels. 
You might get much worse information from many 
professed historians : indeed it has been evident, 
ever since the days of Herodotus and Thucydides, 
that to be a good historian you must possess some 
of the qualifications of both tragedian and novel- 
ist ; if you would describe a character correctly, 
you must have insight into character, a delicate 
perception of motive, traceable often in unim- 
portant actions ; and, if you would describe a 
scene correctly, you must wield the wand of the 
magician, and picture the past by an effort of the 
imagination. The famous " characters" in Claren- 
don's History demanded talents of the same na- 
ture to describe them as did Shakspeare's Henrys 

18 



202 ON NOVELS. 

and Richards. Macaulay's word-pictures of the 
trials of the seven bishops and of Warren Hast- 
ings are the results of the employment of the same 
faculties as those which painted the pageants in 
Kenilworth, or the torture-scene in Old Mortality. 
I do not deny that there is truth in the criticism 
that Scott's novels have too much of a family like- 
ness among them, — that there is too uniform a 
set of characters throughout ; but a man must be 
a much greater novel-reader than you are Jikely to 
be at present to discover that weakness ; and when 
he has found it in Scott, he will find it as unmistak- 
ably and quite as inexcusably in other novelists ; 
but of this I am sure, that you will learn not a little 
sound history from the Crusades to the " Forty- 
five," and gain a considerable insight into all — and 
especially Scotch — character by a perusal of Scott's 
novels. You will have brought vividly before you, 
painted in colors which can never entirely fade, 
the enthusiastic crusade period both at home and 
abroad, the brilliant court of Elizabeth, London 
Life in James I.'s time, the days of the Puritan 
ascendency, and the reaction against that ascend- 
ency under the third Stuart, the tale of mingled 
cruelty and courage of the fanatic Covenanters, 



ON NOVELS. 203 

the hopeless attempt of Fifteen, and the ail-but 
successful one of Forty-five, — all described in lan- 
guage as vivid as the style is natural, and by a pen 
guided by so high a sense of duty that not one 
word calls for erasure to meet the eyes of the 
purest-minded or most fastidious. If for no other 
purpose, Scott's novels will always be studied as 
examples of a perfectly unaffected style, untainted 
by a pretentiousness which other great novelists 
might well have avoided. 

You have told me more than once, when called 
on to write an essay descriptive of some place or 
scene, how difficult a work it is either to think of 
what to say, or to find fit words in which to ex- 
press your ideas. I cannot do better than recom- 
mend to you a careful study of some of Scott's 
descriptions ; you will find them very numerously 
scattered up and down his writings : indeed they 
are the distinguishing feature of his works, and so 
good that the most exacting critic has never yet 
found fault with them. Among the best is his pic- 
ture of the coast of Fifeshire in The Antiquary, 
under the circumstances of a gathering and then 
raging tempest, and with all the natural awfulness 
of the scene heightened by the narrow escape of 



204 ON NOVELS. 

the chief characters from death. It is too good 

not to be quoted at length : 

" The sun was now resting his huge disk upon the edge 
of the level ocean, and gilded the accumulation of tow- 
ering clouds through which he had traveled the livelong 
day, and which now assembled on all sides, like misfor- 
tunes and disasters around a sinking empire and fallen 
monarch. Still, however, his dying splendor gave a som- 
ber magnificence to the massive congregation of vapors, 
forming out of their unsubstantial gloom the show of pyr- 
amids and towers — some touched with gold, some with 
purple, some with a hue of deep and dark red. The dis- 
tant sea, stretched beneath this varied and gorgeous can- 
opy, lay almost portentously still, reflecting back the daz- 
zling and level beams of the descending luminary, and 
the splendid coloring of the clouds amid which he was 
setting. Nearer to the beach the tide rippled onward in 
waves of sparkling silver, that imperceptibly yet rapidly 

gained upon the sand Following the windings of 

the beach, they passed one projecting point of headland 
or rock after another, and now found themselves under a 
huge and continued extent of precipices by which that 
iron-bound coast is in most places defended. Long pro- 
jecting reefs of rock, extending under water, and only 
evincing their existence by here and there a peak entirely 
bare, or by the breakers which foamed over those that 
were partially covered, rendered Knockwinnock Bay 
dreaded by pilots and shipmasters. The crags which 
rose between the beach and the mainland to the height of 
two or three hundred feet afforded in their crevices shel- 
ter for unnumbered sea-fowl, in situations seemingly se- 
cured by their dizzy height from the rapacity of man. 
Many of these wild tribes, with the instinct that sends 
them to seek the land before a storm arises, were now 



ON NOVELS. 205 

winging toward tlieir nests witli the shrill and dissonant 
clang which announces disquietude and fear. The disk 
of the sun became almost totally obscured ere he had al- 
together sunk below the horizon, and an early and lurid 
shade of darkness blotted the serene twilight of a summer 
evening. The wind began to arise ; but its wild and moan- 
ing sound was heard for some time, and its effects became 
visible on the bosom of the sea, before the gale was felt 
on shore. The mass of waters, now dark and threatening, 
began to lift itself in larger ridges, and sink in deeper 
furrows, forming waves that rose high in foam upon the 
breakers, or burst upon the beach with a sound resembling 
distant thunder." 

You will hardly, after reading this, experience 
the "aching void" you speak of upon having 
to describe a well-known scene ; and this is but 
one specimen of very many scores of such in Scott's 
novels ; it is one of the best, but there are not a 
few others equal to it ; such as the rush of the 
flood-tide over the Solway Firth in Redgaunt- 
let, the wild n ess of the border-land in Guy Man- 
nering, and the iron coast of Galloway in the same 
novel, the Scotch highlands in Waverley, and even 
scenes v/hich were known to the writer only by 
books and descrioed only through the united effort 
of a well-stored memory and a rich imagination, 
such as the Syrian desert in The Talisman, or the 

18* 



206 ON NOVELS. 

Alpine pass in Anne of Geier stein, which latter a 
Swiss critic could not believe had been written by 
a man who had never seen a glacier or heard an 
avalanche. Nor indeed was it in descriptions of 
natural scenery only that Scott's genius was pre- 
eminent : whenever the canvas had to be filled by 
many figures, the more lively was the scene, the 
more successful were the artist's efforts. He will 
introduce you into the golden pageantry of Eliza- 
beth's court as readily as Shakspeare does into the 
stately revels of the courts of her father and her 
father's great minister. Would you traverse the 
streets of London in days when the apprentices' 
persuasive tongues were employed at the doors, 
instead of, as now, behind the counters? Scott 
will take you down the Strand arm-in-arm with 
Nigel. He will usher you into the courts of kings 
as readily as into the worshipful society of Alsa- 
tians and gipsies ; he is equally at home by the 
farmer's snug fireside, in the smuggler's boat, at 
the hospitable board of a Saxon thane, or the si- 
lent supper of the rigid Puritan. You cannot fail 
of being carried along with your cicerone : you 
feel the spell of the magician upon you, and obey 
you must. 



ON NOVELS. 207 

It is fair criticism that Scott's types of character 
are not many. It is true they are not; but the 
few there are are perfect in their way. We will omit 
all historical characters — and you may go further 
and fare worse in your search after better likenesses 
of them — but his own creations are well worth an 
introduction to. In these days, when law and 
society necessarily level many eccentricities, and 
help to throw the leaden mantle of uniformity over 
all of us, it is pleasant to be introduced to such ex- 
tinct species as Edie Ochiltree and Meg Merrilies 
and the faithful Caleb, and to realize what life 
must have been like in days that could evoke the 
mercenary courage of Dugald Dalgetty, or the 
iron fanaticism of Balfour of Burley. You will 
find all the richest and best types of Scott's char- 
acters — all the raciest humor and all the truest 
pathos — in (as is natural) his Scotch novels. 
After all, the petty belt of land from the Gram- 
pians to the Cheviots, and from the Eirth of Forth 
to Fortpatrick, is Scott's own. All his best novels 
(with the single exception of the Pirate) took root 
in that soil. It was to him what the backwoods of 
America were to Cooper ; what England — not the 
United Kingdom — has been to Dickens ; and Lon- 



208 ON NOVELS. 

don fashionable life and English country-houses 
have been to Thackeray. 

The original idea of the Scott monument at 
Edinburgh — still, I believe, incomplete — was to 
surround the central figure of the great magician 
with the figures of the characters which his spirit 
had called from the vasty deep. It would have 
been far more in accordance with his genius to 
have executed his great historical and exquisite 
natural scenes in fresco, in a hall which would 
have led up to the great master's statue, while still 
adorning that hall with statues of the best of his 
characters. But the time when he died was not 
ripe for such a work; we had not architectural 
knowledge sufficient to see that rows of statues in 
the open air are an extravagant absurdity in a 
northern climate ; and there was no general per- 
ception then of the vast superiority of his scenes 
over his characters ; or rather the school had not 
then risen which was to delineate the various shades 
of character of the present as skillfully as he had 
roughly but vigorously painted the past, else it 
would have indeed been a memorial worthy of the 
subject to have enshrined Scott in a hall glowing 
with bright colors, where under one roof the im- 



ON NOVELS. 209 

petuous Charles of Burgundy and his wily suzerain, 
the courtly Leicester and the witty Rochester, the 
unhappy Queen of Scots and the brilliant Cheva- 
lier, might have delighted the eyes of many gene- 
rations. Nor would room have been wanting for 
homelier scenes ; and the Antiquary might have 
discovered the Praetorium, and Caleb Balderstone 
have rubbed his imaginary plate, and old Mause 
have preached martyrdom to the unwilling Cuddle, 
and Dandle Dinmont have mustered the many 
generations of Peppers and Mustards forever. 
Dis aliter visum. May future generations recog- 
nize their opportunities more wisely, and may 
Scott's characters and scenes be part of the educa- 
tion of all future Englishmen, as they have been of 
every educated Englishman hitherto ! 



XVII. 

ON NOVELS. No. 2. 

n~^HE enormous popularity which Dickens met 
-"- with from the outset of his career leaves me 
the less to say, as you are acquainted with more 
of his novels than of any other author. There is, 
perhaps, more mere amusement and less informa- 
tion to be gained from them than from either of 
the two other great novelists. The lessons which 
Dickens undoubtedly intended to convey, and to a 
considerable extent did successfully impart, are 
now less needed ; not a little, we may believe, 
thanks to his writings. To take but two in- 
stances : this much is certain, that an improve- 
ment in the character and competency of nurses 
for the sick dates from the introduction of the firm 
of Mesdames Gamp and Prig to the public ; and 
the fact that some dozen northern private school- 
masters threatened Dickens with legal proceedings 
is a pretty clear proof that the mysteries of Do- 
(210) 



ON NOVELS 211 

the-boys Hall were most righteously unveiled to 
the public gaze. I cannot recommend you to 
study Dickens for style. It is sometimes slipshod 
and weak, and sometimes strained and artificial. 
The weaknesses of an author's style are seen most 
vividly in his admirers and imitators ; and you will 
see Dickens's style unintentionally caricatured, and 
that to perfection, in many of the second-rate 
periodicals of the day. Nor is the author to blame 
for this. Through all time Horace's " imitatores 
servum pecus" will abound, — men who have neither 
the taste to perceive nor the sense to avoid the ex- 
aggerations of a master. Doubtless Dickens, too, 
has many a time felt what Horace not only felt but 

expressed : 

" ut mihi ssepe 
Bilera, ssepe jocum vestri movere tumultus." 

Sometimes you will find an English scene painted 
in words singularly forcible and appropriate, as the 
well-known gale at Great Yarmouth in David 
Copperfield ; but from the very first and best of 
all his works it is unmistakably apparent what his 
real powers are. Humor rich and rare ; the hap- 
piest conception, not merely of individual char- 
acter, but of the funniest circumstances in which 



212 ON NOVELS. 

to place them ; the most felicitous filling of the 
canvas by each figure in its right place ; a certain 
extravagance of absurdity which is never out of 
place in the society in which it occurs, — are char- 
acteristics which at once assured and have since 
secured to him the widest and most lasting popu- 
larity of all contemporary novelists. 

There is no doubt a certain latent error in this 
excess of fun ; his life is rather that of children 
than of men ; and after the publication of his first 
and richest display of humor, Dickens felt the 
truth which Shakspeare has in all his plays per- 
sistently maintained, that life is not all joke nor all 
seriousness. In his most solemn tragedies there 
is some comedy, in the cheerfulest melodrama 
some tragedy : the careworn Bolingbroke and his 
fiery nobles are succeeded in the next scene by 
Falstafi", and Bardolf, and Mrs. Quickly; the road 
to battle lies by Justice Shallow's country house; 
Hamlet does not die until he has "chaffed" the 
gravedigger in his own quaint vein. You will 
soon notice for yourself, as you read, where Dick- 
ens's superiority lies, and you will probably regret 
with me that there are not more Pickwicks, and 
less Bleak Houses, despite the fact that Pickwick 
is a burlesque throughout. 



ON NOVELS. 213 

I shall add no more about Dickens than that I 
am sure you may spend many an idle hour worse 
than in the worshipful society of Sam Weller, Mr. 
Pecksnijff, Mrs. Gamp, Mr. Bumble, and Mr. Mi- 
cawber. How many who were young when Mrs. 
Gamp first quoted Mrs. Harris would wish that 
they had no worse-spent hours to look back 
upon ! 

It is a remarkable fact that two writers so great 
and so dissiuiilar should have been contemporaries 
as Dickens and Thackeray. I will merely point 
out to you that they are almost the counterparts 
of one another, and leave you to conjecture whether, 
if the powers of both had been united in one per- 
son, we should not have had a man great with 
something of Shakspeare's greatness, that many- 
sidedness which all can admire and none can at- 
tain to. In Thackeray you will find the daily life 
of London, fashionable and idle, as well as labori- 
ous and vulgar, described in language equally 
lively, nervous, and exact. You may learn many 
a lesson in self-knowledge, as the critic cruelly lays 
bare the mixed motives which too often guide our 
best, and the mean ones which guide the worst, of 
our actions: "mutato nomine, de me fabula nar- 

19 



214 ON NOVELS. 

ratur," each of us may, in one page or another, 
say of ourselves. And we can never admire enough 
the valiant battle he wages throughout with shams 
of all kinds ; from sham dinner-parties to sham 
patriotism, which latter Dr. Johnson well defined 
as "the last refuge of a scoundrel." 

The predominant element in Thackeray's writings 
is undoubtedly the critical spirit; a spirit of almost 
suspicious mistrust of all external appearances. He 
reminds one of the instruments we have read of de- 
tectives using to discover hidden papers — hammers 
to tap for secret drawers, long skewers to probe 
cushions and chair-seats. Perhaps (for perfect 
works of art) there is too much of it in his novels; 
but consider whether in a country where wealth 
has increased far faster than education has im- 
proved — I don't mean only learning, but the men- 
tal training which makes the gentleman and lady — 
where with many a display of money and money's 
worth is the sole test and criterion of the gentle- 
man — whether such a preacher as Thackeray was 
not imperatively called for, and does not exactly 
meet the wants of the times. And none but very 
superficial readers— and these are the last novels 
to be read superficially — would assert that Thack- 



ON NOVELS 215 

eray's heart does not warm as readily to goodness 
as his sdeva indignaiio kindles at untruthfulness or 
cruelty. As one of the best illustrations of the 
truth of this, I would advise you to read without 
delay, if you have not done so already, that very 
clever pair of pictures, the " Curate's Walk," and 
a " Dinner in the City," published in the second 
volume of "Miscellanies." You will rarely find 
anything more tender, loving, kindly, and good, 
than the former; the different sketches of the three 
little sisters in their solitary home, which they 
keep exquisitely neat, and where they work all 
day — the eldest of them ten, who "had been a 
mother ever since she was five" — their Sunday 
" holiday " spent at church and the Sunday-school ; 
the description of the room, with the tea got ready 
at three o'clock p.m., two or three bits of dry bread 
and a jug of water — could not have been drawn but 
by a man whose heart warmed instinctively to all 
that was good and true. 

Notice too the quiet satire in the account of the 
glories of Mr. Filch's shop-window ; the scene so 
natural when the drunken father sends the child off 
before he goes to drink away the value of the waist- 
coat just pawned ; the keen insight which could 



216 ON NOVELS. 

see the pride of the shoemaker of "advanced" 
opinions, as the proud priest supplied him with 
food and money; and above all, the humorous 
episode of the children to whom, " though know- 
ing it is wrong to give away large sums of money 
promiscuously," he gives a penny; and the neglect 
of the mangy puppy that ensued thereupon. You 
will hardly find in all Thackeray's works a better 
example of his singular power (the kindly heart 
and vigorous brain) than is contained in this sim- 
ple little story. 

And the pendant is as good a miniature of his 
powers of another class. The assembling of the 
guests, the decorations of the table, the enumera- 
tion of the viands, culminate in the summary of the 
banquet itself: 

" A steam of meats, a flare of candles, a rushing to and 
fro of waiters, a ceaseless clinking of glass and steel, a 
dizzy mist of gluttony, out of which I can see my old 
friend of the turtle-soup making terrific play among the 
peas, his knife darting down his throat." 

But, above all, do not merely read but study the 
speeches ; they are models of what after-dinner 
oratory should not be, to all time : the helpless 
blunders of the old general, the pompous empti- 



ON NOVELS. 211 

ness of the secretary of the tape and sealing-wax 
office, the fluent conceit of the American minister, 
are all alike inimitable. 

I have spoken as yet only of Thackeray's powers 
as an artist : what I value most is Thackeray the 
moralist ; and I wish that any of you who are to 
enter upon Belgravian life knew all his great 
novels well. Porearmed is forewarned ; and it is 
well to have read of all kinds of character — of both 
Lady Kew and Lady Rockminster, Colonel New- 
come and the Marquis of Farintosh, Ethel and 
Becky Sharpe — before you meet them. And in 
these novels you will travel far beyond English 
homes of kindliness and boudoirs of scandal. 
Would you like to know the sort of company that 
waits your arrival at a German gambling board ? 
Here is one of them drawn to the life : 

"That man, so calm and well bred, with a stinng of 
orders on his breast, so well dressed, with such white 
hands, has stabbed trusting hearts, severed family ties, 
written lying vows, signed false oaths, torn up pitilessly 
tender appeals for redress, and tossed away into the fire 
supplications blistered with tears; packed cards and 
cogged dice, and used pistol or sword as calmly and dex- 
trously as he now ranges his battalions of gold pieces." 

You may travel in Thackeray's company (and 
19* 



218 ON NOVELS. 

who could wish for better ?) more than once 
through the Rhine country and Switzerland, into 
all the ruined glories of ancient Rome, and the 
eccentricities of artist life in modern Rome ; you 
can attend a ball at the Prince Polignac's, or 
smoke your cigar at the Cafe G-reco ; but, after 
all, as the Border land was Scott's own country, 
so the Parks, and Belgravia, and Brighton, in the 
season, are Thackeray's : he will point out all the 
notabilities to you down Rotten Row and in the 
Opera; will introduce you to a quiet party at 
Greenwich, and a noisy one at the Star and Gar- 
ter; and so will many another novelist, but they 
will not raise the veil and show you the real 
characters of the men as Thackeray will ; you will 
not learn from them, as you do from Thackeray, 
to see the meanness concealed beneath the cloak 
of ostentation, and hypocrisy in the mask of honor : 
above all, few others will give you such true views of 
life, few will be true to truth, and dare to describe 
the gallant simple-minded preux chevalier dying in 
his little room, a pensioner at Greyfriars — concern- 
ing which I will only say I do not envy the man 
who can read that chapter with dry eyes — and Miss 
Becky Sharpe entertaining her clique at Bath as 



ON NOVELS. 219 

Lady Crawley. And yet each had reaped as they 
had sown ; but few novelists are true enough to 
say so in their works. It was right that Becky's 
manoeuvres should end in a somewhat questionable 
respectability in Bath society, and that the simple- 
minded Colonel Newcorae's childlike character 
should be the victim of his own simplicity, and that 
he should be deserted by the friends of his wealth. 
And yet even now Thackeray's works are (like 
Tennyson's) caviare to the multitude: they are 
harder to appreciate than either Dickens or Scott, 
or indeed than any other of our novelists ; harder 
because they contain a more subtle and more pro- 
found analysis of character, because they are writ- 
ten to teach as well as to amuse ; harder because 
they describe a society of which the ignohile vul- 
gus care only to hear scandal; harder because the 
great British public is not yet educated to appre- 
ciate the delicate shades of character by which 
Thackeray chiefly charms us, the mixed motives, 
the weaknesses of the good, the nobler moments 
of the frivolous or selfish; but all the more there- 
fore should excellences such as these, so true to 
nature, and yet so rare in books, be felt and ad- 
mired by men of education. There is too a tone of 



220 ON NOVELS. 

melancholy pervading his finest works which is char- 
acteristic of all the greatest authors, and of none 
but the greatest ; and this too will probably long 
retard the popularity of his writings among the 
large class to whom a burlesque is the noblest 
effort of the drama, and a sensation novel the 
perfection of literature. It is a simple subject the 
sight of an old letter ; but read what associations 
it recalls to a man of deep feeling : 

" See the faded ink on the yellow paper that may have 
crossed and recrossed the ocean, that has lain locked in 
chests for years and bm-ied under piles of family archives, 
while your friends have been dying and your head has 
grown white. Who has not disinterred mementoes like 
these, from which the past smiles at you so sadly, shim- 
mering out of Hades an instant, but to sink back again 
into the cold shades, perhaps with a faint, faint sound, as 
of a remembered tone — a ghostly echo of a once- familiar 
laughter? I was looking of late at a wall in the Naples 
Museum, whereon a boy of Herculaneum, eighteen hun- 
dred years ago, had scratched with a nail the figure of a 
soldier. I could fancy the child turning round and 
smiling at me after having done his etching. Which of 
us that is thirty years old has not had his Pompeii ' Deep 
under ashes lies the life of youth, the careless sport, the 
pleasure and passion, the darling joy. You open an old 
letter-box and look at your own childish scrawls, or your 
mother's letters to you when you were at school, and 
excavate your heart. me! for the day when the whole 
city shall be bare, and the chambers unroofed, and every 
cranny visible to the light above, from the Forum to the 
Lupanar ! " 



XVIII. 

TO A PUPIL AT THE UNIVERSITY. 

T DO certainly recommend you to join both the 
-*- " Union" and the "Amateur Dramatic;" and 
I will defend my advice not only on the ground of 
reason but of antiquity; the most redoubtable 
conservative of ancient customs shall admit the 
force of the argument. 

You are not expected, you tell me, by your 
friends to take more than an ordinary degree : if 
it were otherwise, I should still advise your join- 
ing one of the two societies you were asking me 
about ; and that because a man not only needs 
much in life that he can learn otherwise than 
through books, but yet further, he needs much that 
books cannot possibly teach him in any way. It 
is a curious fact in the history of University studies 
that every object of study except book-work has 
steadily died out there ; only one important name 
is left at Cambridge testifying to quite a different 

(221) 



222 TO A PUPIL AT THE UNIVERSITY. 

line of study in days gone by. The wranglers were 
really the ablest disputants of their year; the mod- 
erators played the part, and somewhat more, of the 
moderator in the Scotch ecclesiastical assemblies — 
they were chairmen, and guided and judged the 
fray. Whether or no the University has done 
wisely in abolishing all this training — training, 
you will notice, of quite a different kind to that 
tested by papers in an examination-hall — time 
alone will decide ; but I do without hesitation 
maintain the belief that the lessons once taught 
by "wrangling" in the schools are now taught, 
perhaps more effectually because less compulsorily, 
in the Union debating rooms and on the boards of 
the Amateur Dramatic. Powers of composition 
are at least as valuable as those of analysis ; we 
have run crazy on criticism in England ever since 
Coleridge's time ; it would be well if the tables 
were turned for awhile, and we had more of the 
old training of the wranglers and less of the 
modern training of books alone : the one evoked 
quickness in perception, readiness in language, 
facility in reply, self-dependence, presence of mind, 
and the qualities necessary for men in any public 
station. Now as no men seek a University edu- 



TO A PUPIL AT THE UNIVERSITY. 223 

cation who do not intend to appear more or less 
in public life, I earnestly advise you to seize the 
ooly opportunities of cultivating these powers 
which University life still offers you. Your work 
for your examinations will teach you to think; 
what you want farther, is to gain the result of 
thought — composition, not criticism ; synthesis, as 
it is technically termed, not analysis. For all 
University men, as a rule, are preparing for one of 
three spheres of life — the barrister's, the country 
gentleman's, or the clergyman's. As regards the 
first of these professions, how many able men have 
been lost to active life, and been obliged to sub- 
side into chamber-counsel, from want of the powers 
we have spoken of, is known really to none, and 
can only be very slightly guessed at; but by all 
accounts it is considerable. In their case one fail- 
ure from want of language, readiness, tact, or 
presence of mind, is fatal ; the victim passes away 
into obscurity : and perhaps many wish that the 
victims of a similar incapacity in the other two 
spheres of life did the same ; but they don't, and 
this is often very visible and very vexatious. 
For, say what yon will, it is a sad deficiency not 
to possess the slightest fragment of that gift which 



224 TO A PUPIL AT THE UNIVERSITY. 

has been well defined as "the power of thinking 
on your legs." It is a serious drawback for a 
young man entering public life to have the sneer 
recorded against him that he managed the speech 
in his hat not so badly after all : it is a real afflic- 
tion to be seized with a fit of sudden dumbness as 
you rise to propose some trivial toast at a bucolic 
festival : it is a real grief to a high-minded clergy- 
man to tread out the weary round of formal ser- 
mons week by week, to notice the flagging interest 
and watch the glazing eyes and nodding heads of 
his congregation, and know that his rival the In- 
dependent tinker can, any evening in the week, 
collect hundreds of the parishioners on the village- 
green to listen to his execrable theology, but 
homely and vigorous English. 

Now as you have to look forward to facing 
some of these difficulties before many more years 
of your life are over, you are unquestionably right 
in having chosen to add this especial study to those 
now provided by Alma Mater; and if you were 
reading for high honors, I should (after some years' 
experience of the world) advise your joining one 
of the two societies you name, as in your case I 
advise joining both. And this I do knowing well 



TO A PUPIL AT THE UNIVERSITY. 225 

the common objections raised against either, which 
are, like most objections, " very sound as far as 
they go.'' It is easy enough to ridicule the speakers 
at the Union (where, by-the-way, I never made one 
myself) ; but if all societies were to be snubbed, 
and if possible abolished, where absurd speeches 
were made, what would become of the great de- 
bating society at St. Stephen's, Westminster ? If 
no crude knowledge, no exaggerated statements-, 
no " tall talk," were to be permitted, the daily 
papers would be vacant with the horrible vacancy 
of the recess all the year round. A sneer never 
proved anything yet, except how very disagreeable 
the sneerer was; but you may be sure that if you 
begin by carefully listening to debates of the Union, 
and by degrees gain confidence to take part in 
them, you will acquire powers at least as valuable 
as a knowledge of Paley's profound morality, or of 
the construction of a common-(place) pump ; you 
will exercise your memory in collecting materials 
for your own orations, your judgment in seizing 
upon the right points to which to reply in your 
opponent's speech ; you will add enormously to 
your vocabulary and to your knowledge of the 
strength and resources of the English language. 

20 



226 TO A PUPIL AT THE UNIVERSITY. 

This last acquisition alone is a matter of the very 
greatest importance. How often of late years have 
really able men broken down in public life from the 
pure and simple ignorance of their own language. 
Even when they had mastered their subject thor- 
oughly, and held their disconnected facts (like 
marbles loose in a bag) at command by the thou- 
sand together, they could not collect the scattered 
threads, or weave them into any fabric presentable 
to the least fastidious audience. And it is no use 
to possess threads of purple and lawn and gold, if 
you can only produce them as frayed, as meager, 
as dilapidated as the jacket of a ragged school- 
boy. Depend upon it there was much to be said 
for the old wrangling or disputing in the schools 
in former days ; it degenerated no doubt into a 
farce, but the spirit should have been maintained, 
though the form was changed : 

*' The old order changeth, giving place to new, 
And God fulfills Himself in many ways." 

But the clean sweep that was made of all oral ex- 
amination, and the entire substitution of paper- 
work, are at best questionable advantages. No 
doubt writing is the test of accuracy, and accuracy 



TO A PUPIL AT THE UNIVERSITY. 227 

is the first thing necessary in mental discipline ; but 
the many mental powers elicited, developed, and 
matured by debate, are of no slight weight in the 
daily affairs of men, and must always remain so. 
It is, too, a considerable advantage for a man who 
has not the goal of "honors" before his eyes, to 
have set before him a weekly subject for discussion ; 
some at least of the subjects proposed will be to 
your taste ; and you will surely lay no bad founda- 
tion for more complete knowledge as a politician 
in the careful study of a few such subjects at your 
present time of life. It is notorious that many of 
the best speakers of late years in " the House" were 
foremost in the debates of the Oxford Union of their 
day ; and Ruskin would probably tell you that it 
is to the same practice that he owes the power of 
"calling from the vasty deep," not spirits, but liv- 
ing words, which indeed are instinct with a life and 
spirit of their own, whether he wants with them to 
color a cottage wall, or catch the fleeting thunder- 
cloud, — whether to employ them on errands of in- 
vective or sarcasm, or to invoke pity or awe. As 
regards the amateur acting, of course the great at- 
traction to you is in the fun of the thing, and that 
I can fully sympathize with ; but there is much 



228 TO A PUPIL AT THE UNIVERSITY. 

more than this in the background. It is no slight 
gain to be able to acquire even a few of the quali- 
fications of a good actor ; it is not everybody who 
can so throw off his own personality and identify 
himself with the feelings, desires, circumstances, 
and character of another. And the strengthening 
one's memory is no slight consideration : you must 
" learn your part" — in a very different sense to that 
in which you learned it at your repetition lessons 
at school ; and if you want to become a good actor, 
you must fully understand all the parts of the other 
characters who appear with you. The merely in- 
tellectual labor required is of itself no slight 
recommendation ; and if anybody has a doubt 
about the general tendencies of such an amuse- 
ment, let him read the account of the Eton private 
theatricals of about half a century ago, in that 
amusing account of Eton entitled Etoniana. 

There may be, of course, objections to the 
Amateur Dramatic, independent altogether of the 
principle of the thing ; there may be at times an 
undesirable body of men at the head of it, with 
whom it is not prudent for you to associate. That 
is a separate question altogether, and must be 
treated independently. Your own sense and good 



TO A PUPIL AT THE UNIVERSITY. 229 

feeling must, then, decide your course. I have 
written merely regarding the spirit and object of 
the two societies ; and if quickness of perception, 
readiness of speech, fluency of language, and a 
graceful carriage are matters of real importance 
in the affairs of life, then, on the principle that 
whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well, 
I shall hope to hear of you as a " skillful gladiator" 
in debate, and a " decided success" on the amateur 
boards. It is well known that for purposes of 
public speaking there are few schools more effective 
than the amateur theater. The copia verborum 
supplied by the study of several parts in different 
plays is very great. The strengthening of the 
memory, by the continual exercise in which it is 
kept by the^owrs deforce which on an emergency 
it must be capable of, is far more important than 
is generally imagined. You gain too in habits of 
confidence and self-dependence. You are prepared 
to face, not shrink from, the public. There is no 
ordeal so sharp, no test so crucial, as the criticism 
of your own equals. The value of this test is one 
of the commonest arguments for the maintenance 
of the old custom of reciting speeches at our public 

20* 



230 TO A PUPIL AT THE UNIVERSITY. 

schools ; and if true in that case, it is doubly true 
in the one before us : "a man must screw up his 
courage to the sticking-place" before he can run 
the gantlet of men as unsparing of criticism as 
University men naturally are. 



XIX. 

HOW IS ONE TO LEARN TO DRAW ? 

f\F all the "accomplishments," as they are most 
^ erroneously termed, there is none, perhaps, 
the ignorance of which is more often regretted in 
later years, or whose principles are more easily 
mastered in youth, than this of drawing. I am 
speaking of drawing with pencil or pen, not of 
painting in any material. It is a curious but well- 
proved fact that numbers of people are born more 
or less color-blind, as numbers are more or less 
unmusical, that is, music-deaf; but very few, if any, 
are blind to form and shadow ; and drawing is no- 
thing else but the correct representation of these 
two. If but a fraction of the time that is labo- 
riously wasted, sometimes upon languages, some- 
times on music, sometimes on so-called science, ie. 
young ladies' school-room science (Heaven save the 
mark !), were devoted to studying drawing on right 

(231) 



232 HOW IS ONE TO LEARN TO DRAW? 

principles, our sight would be disciplined, and a 
habit of correct observation would be formed — a 
point of paramount importance, and one of the 
first characteristics of an educated mind — and we 
should be furnished with one of the pleasantest 
companions on our journeys abroad or at home, 
there being no diary to compare with a well-filled 
sketch-book, and besides, with a pleasant employ- 
ment for many an idle hour on wet days, when even 
chronic billiards and an occasional look at the 
stables will not keep off the evil spirit of ennui. 

Some studies are almost impossibilities to many 
minds, and minds too of no ordinary caliber. No 
power on earth, Dr. Arnold said, could have made 
him understand a really difficult problem in alge- 
bra. That eminent scholar the late Archdeacon 
Hare was another example of the same inability. 
A correct pronunciation of French is probably 
never acquired by any man after the age of twenty. 
The first rudiments of science are to many as in- 
comprehensible as I have been told music is to 
many scientific or literary minds. But it may be 
doubted whether there really are so many as five 
per cent, in your position, and with your education, 



HOW IS ONE TO LEARN TO DRAW? 233 

who could not be taught to draw correctly — I 
mean so as to give pleasure to themselves and con- 
vey information to others. The remarkable success 
of drawing-lessons established among classes with- 
out half your education and opportunities, has de- 
cidedly proved how liberally nature has endowed 
us all with this power of describing the distant and 
the unseen. And yet it is painfully evident that 
drawing is unpopular. I am continually met with 
the same answer : " I wish I could learn ; but it is 
awfully stupid work, learning." The reason is 
truer than many similar ones ; the study is made 
an awfully stupid one. Its unpopularity lies in the 
fact of the extremely unreasonable system on 
which it is taught; a system which makes no pre- 
tense to a knowledge of principles, which teaches 
a hodge-podge of disjointed facts, or rather fails of 
teaching even them, from the weariness and dis- 
gust which its stupidity is sure to create. 

Now there are but two difficulties to be mastered, 
two points of study in all ; one is form, and the 
other is shadow. By the first you observe and im- 
itate the relative shape and size of objects, and 
their relative distance from each other ; by the 



234 HOW IS ONE TO LEARN TO DRAW? 

second you discover and imitate the secret of their 
roundness, and the effect of sunlight upon them. 
You can get no further by drawing than this : 
form will tell you that in distance objects appear, 
and therefore must be represented, smaller than 
those nearer to you ; and ah adow Yf'iW tell you that 
in distance shadows will, except in a partially 
lighted scene, appear lighter, until they disappear 
into the sky-shadow in the distance ; everything 
being more or less shadow, except the sun itself. 

If you really wMsh to teach yourself — and, if 
you have a spark of enthusiasm, you may get far 
worse instructors — get Ruskin's Elements of the 
Art of Drawing, a small and perfectly intelligible 
volume, and from it {experto crede) you will learn 
more in a few days than any ordinary drawing- 
master will teach you in his lifetime. Ruskin will 
show you how to draw a common pebble, taken by 
chance out of the road ; and you will feel how when 
once that has been really mastered, you can then 
easily draw a distant alp, and a fleecy cloud curling 
round its precipices. But you must honestly and 
laboriously follow his advice ; not skip some les- 
sons and rush on to more interesting ones ; and 



HOW IS ONE TO LEARN TO DRAW? 235 

above all, I advise you to attend to his hints about 
the use of the pen. You may be grievously dis- 
gusted after a few years to find the gloss and depth 
and richness of your pencil-drawing fast disappear- 
ing ; but the pen work is as enduring as print; and 
we may humbly remember, too, that such artists 
as Raphael and Rembrandt and Turner would not 
have used the pen so freely without good reason. 
I mention this because pen-shading is at once far 
more tedious and difficult than pencil-work, and at 
your age present difficulties are often more regarded 
than future advantages. 

Do not either be disheartened by some kind friend 
assuring you that " a little knowledge is a danger- 
ous thing," which of all common sayings (the tyr- 
annous "chacun d son gouV^ alone excepted) has 
been perhaps the most abused. A little knowledge 
is never a dangerous thing ; a little smattering is 
not only dangerous, but contemptible ; but if you 
study in the way I have mentioned, your learning 
must be knowledge, not smattering ; knowledge is 
founded on principle, smattering on isolated facts 
— "cram" work, in short. However you may suc- 
ceed, you will at least attach a higher value to form 



236 HOW IS ONE TO LEARN TO DRAW? 

wherever seen, and a deeper meaning to shadow ; 
and I shall be much mistaken if you do not soon 
overcome the drudgery, and begin to fill your 
, sketch-book with a keener sense of pleasure than 
of toil. 

One word more : do not undervalue drawing be- 
cause you cannot color ; it would be as unreason- 
able to depreciate a sufficient knowledge of music 
to accompany a ballad because you can't play Beet- 
hoven's sonatas. If you have the "color" in you, 
color will be sure to follow; in many cases I am 
sure it will follow ; it is not easy to study the sim- 
pler principles of form and shadow without a long- 
ing to penetrate the mystery of color too. Here 
again, as in drawing, you will find that there are 
principles which you must grasp, which is exactly 
the point that masters in general do not teach you ; 
and here again you will find much practical advice 
in the same book of Ruskin to which I have already 
referred you. After the principles contained in 
that little volume have been well digested, you 
will do well to get instruction from a master in the 
mechanical part of painting. Whether any of 
their instruction beyond the merely mechanical 
consists of the gold of principles or the tinsel of 



HOW IS ONE TO LEARN TO DRAW? 237 

disjointed facts, you will be capable of judging for 
yourself, and acting upon your judgment. But 
even if the study of color does not follow, you will 
still find yourself in later days looking with delight 
over your sketches of foreign tours, and recalling 
many a pleasant recollection of friends, perhaps 
gone from you forever, whose jokes and laughter 
and kindliness come back through the potent spell 
of a few lines hastily scribbled on the leaf of a 
small drawing-book. 



21 



"HOW AWFULLY TEDIOUS WORK IS!" 

TjrOTJ tell me that you find your work wearisome 
-■- and uninteresting. I am not at all surprised 
to hear it, for I would not undertake to do the 
same kind of work on the terms you set yourself 
at any price : indeed I do not think I could do it. 
I am often surprised that, considering how much 
dead weight you carry, you get at all as near the 
winning-post as you do. I am perfectly certain I 
could not. 

Supposing I had, with no previous knowledge 
of the history, to get up a German memoir (such 
as I have now before me) of the battle of Water- 
loo. I find here, in the course of a few pages, 
mention made of some eight or ten different per- 
sonages, and the names of as many places. Now, 
supposing that I had " learned it to construe," but 
had consulted neither biographical dictionary nor 
map of the country, of what interest could the 
subject be to me ? 
(238) 



HOW AWFULLY TEDIOUS WORK IS ! 239 

Men and places unknown must be the merest 
phantoms of their realities ; and the blame of want 
of interest must surely lie with myself, when I might 
have traced on a good map or plan of the battle 
each step the brave old Blucher made, and heard 
him, with a very small effort of the imagination, 
repeating his everlasting " Forwards, my lads, for- 
wards ! I say we must get forwards. I have prom- 
ised my brother Wellington ; and you don't wish 
me, I suppose, to break my word ;" when I might 
have studied Napoleon's plan (so nearly successful) 
for cutting the allied armies in two ; and the nat- 
ural advantages of the British position, chosen with 
such skill and defended with such dogged courage. 
And if I have not understood all this, whom have 
I to thank but myself ? 

Now I do not say that Caesar's campaigns are as 
engrossing to a modern Englishman as Welling- 
ton's ; but the actions of a great commander should 
always have their interest for all, and especially for 
one who intends to be a soldier himself; and as 
you are studying the book, surely it is great folly 
not to make the history as entertaining as possible ; 
and yet what interest can you feel in places you 
don't know where to find, and in personages who 



240 HOW AWFULLY TEDIOUS WORK IS I 

are to you mere names ? If Caesar and Ariovistus 
are " very like one another, especially the latter," 
it must be indeed a dreary study. But when you 
have once mastered the geography and physical 
features of, for instance, Auvergne, you will then 
gain some idea of the nature of the last great 
struggle for Gallic independence, of the unwearied 
determination of the Koman, his marches through 
days of snow and ice, his siege-operations conducted 
on a scale to inclose 80,000 men within the fatal 
walls of circumvallation. But if you will not use 
the means you have before you to gain an intelli- 
gent appreciation of what you are reading, you 
have no right to turn round upon your subject and 
complain of its dryness. 

I have given this as an illustration : the same 
principle holds good with whatever you do. I have 
explained it more at length in connection with the 
two studies of history and geography. There are 
two causes which produce this habit of imperfect 
learning : one — the less common of the two — a 
desire to learn too much in too short a space of 
time, gorging without digesting or assimilating 
your mental food ; the second — much the most fre- 
quent — natural or acquired slovenliness of mind. 



HOW AWFULLY TEDIOUS WORK IS I 241 

As regards the first, I would remind you that no 
knowledge is so useless as half-knowledge. Would 
you trust a man to shoe your horse who half knew 
his business ? I distinguish carefully between ac- 
curate knowledge of a part of a subject and im- 
perfect acquaintance with the whole of it. If the 
lad could forge a shoe well, though he could not 
fit it, you would let him forge one while his master 
was fitting on another ; but how if he could only 
half-forge and half-fit the shoe ?' A guide who 
knew thoroughly half an unexplored country might 
take you as far as his knowledge would take him, 
where you might find another guide for the rest of 
the route ; but what confidence could you place in 
a guide who knew only a little about the whole 
route, if bad weather came on, and you found your- 
self in the midst of a dense jungle, or near an ex- 
tensive glacier ? A man who half knows any 
branch of study is just in this position. Better, if 
you are to be a soldier, to have studied five, two, 
or one campaign thoroughly, than to have wan- 
dered through acres of letterpress, and not to be 
able to give a true account of a single siege, bat- 
tle, or march, after all. The second cause — mere 
slovenliness of mind — is really so contemptible a 

21* 



242 HOW AWFULLY TEDIOUS WORK IS 1 

habit, that the sooner a man is shamed out of it the 
better. It is the same habit exactly which makes 
your keeper half-clean your gun, your groom half- 
dress your horse ; they have simply translated into 
practical matters what many are daily guilty of in 
the matter of learning ; and you may be encour- 
aged by the thought that if it be true that virtue 
is its own reward, it is doubly true in this particu- 
lar. You change a dull insipid study into a pleas- 
ant and lively one ; you turn, in fact, nonsense into 
sense, and '' build yourself a lordly pleasure house," 
instead of sitting in a chaos of broken bricks and 
splintered timbers. 

There is a certain necessary association in all 
studies, and, as in most associations honestly car- 
ried out, you will find that mutual strength and aid 
is gained from them. A map is not at first sight 
an interesting object, and yet to Niebuhr or Ar- 
nold it gave as great a pleasure as the study of a 
master-piece of painting gives to an artist ; and 
for the same reasons both historians and artists see 
what to most of us is a sealed book : a map was 
to them a picture on which they read the history 
of rising and falling empires, the marches and 
sieges and battles of great military geniuses, the 



HOW AWFULLY TEDIOUS WORK IS ! 243 

conquests of diplomacy, the partition of kingdoms, 
the uniting of small countries into large ones, the 
struggles of rising liberty, the immigration of war- 
like and the extermination of effeminate tribes, the 
infusion of new blood into degenerate states ; in 
fact, all the varied changes of the great human 
family. And such a picture must a map become 
to all of us, more or less, if studied alongside of 
history. Take a map of one of your own coun- 
ties ; take Leicestershire. I open a series of county 
maps at hazard ; the eye falls at once upon Leices- 
ter, where Wolsey came '' to lay his weary bones 
among you," in the convent there ; upon Market 
Bosworth, the battle which gave us the dynasty 
which saw us safely through the Reformation and 
the Armada ; upon Lutterworth, where " the day- 
spring of the Reformation " rose, and we recall the 
time when the Church of those days cast Wick- 
liffe's ashes out "into the Swift, when the Swift 
conveyed them to the Avon, and the Avon' to the 
Severn, and Severn to the broad sea, which has 
carried them, with the truths for which he contested, 
through all lands." We see the name of Market 
Harborough, where fled the tumultuous rout of 
Royalists pell-mell from Naseby, on the road to 



244 HOW AWFULLY TEDIOUS WORK IS I 

Leicester, the avenging sword of the ruthless Puri- 
tan close behind, so that many fell in the streets of 
the town itself; and, if you have an ancient as well 
as a modern map of this part, you cannot fail to mark 
the four great roads converging upon the ancient 
Ratse — the works of that nation of soldiers who 
knew that the spade and the mattock were as use- 
ful in war as the sword ; that if the latter won bat- 
tles, the former retained their advantages — the 
modern Leicester ; while to this day the Wattling 
Street forms its southwest boundary, as the silver 
Trent, for a short distance, forms the northwest 
boundary, and carries us back to the tripartite di- 
vision of England in the insurrection against the 
"ingrate and cankered" Bolingbroke, when the 
fiery Hotspur proposed to dam up the *' smug and 
silver " Trent, and make it flow more equitably for 
his share of the expected spoil. Many county 
maps — those especially of the larger ones — would 
supply at a glance to a very moderate historian as 
much as this ; some, indeed, are perfect mines of 
historical wealth. But to understand this, then, 
you must read your history intelligently, and " look 
out your places in a map." 



XXI. 

HOW TO GIVE MONEY AWAY. 

XrOU are quite right — it is no easy matter to 
-■- give money away judiciously; and injudi- 
cious liberality has done mischief enough in this 
country, as the existence of that singular and bar- 
barous tribe of nomads, the 30,000 tramps in Eng- 
land, will bear witness. You ask me for my ad- 
vice as to how to perform best the duty of alms- 
giving. I give it with some diffidence. No doubt 
the experience of life will soon aid you to correct 
any erroneous impressions here conveyed. 

One of the most thoughtful and at the same 
time most munificent of men, the late Archbishop 
Whately, is reported to have said on his death-bed, 
''I have many faults and shortcomings to blame 
myself with, but I thank God I cannot accuse my- 
self of having given away a penny in the streets." 
The man who uttered these quaint and yet solemn 
words gave to cases of real distress sums that 

(245) 



246 HOW TO GIVE MONEY AWAY. 

amounted to thousands of pounds annually. He 
knew too well, as is more widely known now, that 
of the money given in the streets — east away to 
rid one's self of importunity rather than to aid pen- 
ury, the gift of indolence rather than of liberality 
— probably less than one-thousandth part assists 
the deserving. The rest pampers profligacy, sup- 
ports drunkenness and gluttony, fosters laziness, 
deceit, and imposture, the cankers of our civili- 
zation ; for in proportion as you maintain these 
you discourage industry and honorable toil, you 
show the industrious poor how well men can live 
without industry, the truthful how well it answers 
to be a liar. The thoughtlessness that gives to 
every street beggar feeds in no slight measure the 
deepest ulcer in our body politic — the perennial 
pauperism extant in England. 

But lest you should feel, as every kind-hearted 
man will, indisposed to let even the odd thousandth 
case pass away unaided, let me tell you how you 
may certainly assist that one deserving case, while 
refusing aid to the reprobate. 

It is many years now since the Mendicity So- 
ciety was established in London to meet this very 
evil ; but its work, so unpretentious and yet so ef- 



HOW TO GIVE MONEY AWAY. 247 

fectiv6, is not half as widely known as it is for the 
advantage of the country that it should be. Its 
action is very simple. On payment of a subscrip- 
tion you receive a certain number of tickets : these 
you distribute instead of money to the casual beg- 
gar. On presenting it at the society's offices, he 
will have his case carefully investigated. The 
officers of the society are in constant communica- 
tion with the police ; each application is correctly 
registered, each new face curiously scanned. And 
so thoroughly does this simple machinery effect its 
purpose, that you may learn there some very curi- 
ous statistics relative to the difference between the 
number of tickets given away in the streets and 
those presented at the society's offices — the vast 
majority never presented at all. You may hear, 
too, some very instructive histories of disguises dis- 
covered by them, false histories detected, and even 
the very ablest professors of the science of impo- 
sition reduced to the narrowest straits for support 
within the precints of their profession. "Do you 
know anything of this case ?" was asked at the 
office by a liberal friend of the needy, as he pre- 
sented a begging letter to the secretary, in which 
typhus fever and famine played a very prominent 



248 HOW TO GIVE MONEY AWAY 

part. The reply was somethiDg to this effect: 
*' Perfectly well, sir ; that case has buried three 
wives and seventeen children and many fathers and 
mothers within the last fifteen months. He has 
within the same period been five times bankrupt 
by the rascality of a brother-in-law ; twice smashed 
in railway accidents ; twice turned out of excellent 
situations rather than surrender his conscientious 
scruples— once for being a Roman Catholic, once 
for being a Protestant ; and during the last equi- 
noctial gales he saved nothing but a straw hat and 
pair of canvas trowsers from three different ship- 
wrecks, all in the same night." 

The simple fact is this, that except in a quiet 
country village it is impossible to learn personally 
the exact truth about any application for aid. Some 
indeed of the most skillful begging-letter writers 
are prepared for you if you attempt to unearth 
them, and will take you to a room hired for the 
occasion, where poverty and sickness are simulated 
to the life. Only a society organized for the pur- 
pose, and in close connection with the police, can 
attempt to find the grain of truth in the gallon of 
falsehood. 

You are already beset with begging letters. It 



HOW TO GIVE MONEY AWAY. 249 

is the fate of any man known to have money, and 
to be influenced by a sense of duty in the spending 
of it. Let us classify the letters. You will find 
them all to come under one of these heads : 

1. Private begging letters. 

2. Begging letters from clergy for their par- 
ishes. 

3. Begging letters from societies for moral or 
religious purposes. 

The first class I have already advised you to send 
en masse to the Mendicity Society, replying to the 
writer with a ticket of introduction to their officials, 
which introduction in the great majority of cases 
he will be ungrateful enough to decline. Of course 
there are exceptions to this rule ; applications from 
persons with whom you or your relations are per- 
sonally acquainted, or such applications as men in 
public office receive, such as you will find men- 
tioned in the lives of W. Wilberforce, Sir Robert 
Peel, and other well-known public characters ; ap- 
plications reasonably made and courteously investi- 
gated, to which aid was often privately given with 
a delicacy of feeling which one cannot sufficiently 
admire. 

As regards class No. 2, you will do well to ex- 

22 



250 HOW TO GIVE MONEY AWAY. 

amine each case separately, if you can. It is argued, 
and no doubt with reason, that as a general prin- 
ciple each parish should build and support its own 
church and schools. This principle, however, 
though excellent in theory, is impossible in prac- 
tice, from the extreme poverty of some whole par- 
ishes or districts, not merely in London, but in all 
our larger towns. To meet this want there has 
arisen a system, far preferable to any private beg- 
ging-letter plan, of connecting a wealthy parish at 
one end of a large town with a poverty-stricken 
parish at the other end, and thus making the su- 
perfluities of the one available for the support of 
the other. Here, I would say, give liberally, and 
give more than money ; give your time, if possible, 
to organizing such a system — a system by which 
the unnatural disseverance of rich and poor may 
be mitigated, if not abolished, and the most useful 
lesson in life taught to both, that we are all mem- 
bers one of another. At the same time I must 
honestly express my aversion to what seems the 
mere impertinence of those begging letters dis- 
patched wholesale from a well-to-do country parish 
to ask for aid for a carved font or a stained win- 
dow, or some (no doubt) useful and ornamental 



HOW TO GIVE MONEY AWAY. 251 

piece of church furniture, where it is manifest that 
if the parishioners really wanted those things, they 
would provide them for themselves ; if they do not, 
the erection of them by others is a queer method 
of expressing the parishioners' spirit of self-sacri- 
fice and delight in giving of their best to God's 
worship. The beauty of our old parish churches 
was not accomplished thus by their munificent 
founders. 

I need hardly speak of the claims which your 
own parish has upon your support to its various 
little clubs for the benefit of the poor ; their utility 
is universally admitted ; and they demand support 
on no ground more than this, that they do what 
other charities fail altogether in doing — help the 
poor to help themselves ; the most useful and need- 
ful lesson that can be taught them. If ever the 
chronic pauperism of the country is to be fairly 
grappled with, it will be through the spread of this 
principle. Soup-kitchens, gifts of bread, donations 
of all kinds, relieve immediate poverty, but they 
foster rather than remedy the disease of pauperism. 
On the other hand, every penny that you can get 
the poor to lay by, even temporarily, is a stone 
thrown upon the cairn that marks the grave of 
pauperism. 



252 HOW TO GIVE MONEY AWAY. 

The wantou extravagance and senseless waste- 
fulness of many among English artisans, are, I 
believe, unparalleled in any other European coun- 
try. It is a common occurrence in some places for 
men who are earning as much as 25s. to 35s. a 
week to apply to the clergyman, or board of guard- 
ians, for relief after being a fortnight out of work. 
And I have heard of far worse cases than these: 
of families earning 31. and 4Z. a week spending 
every farthing in eating and drinking, and begging 
shamefully after a week's want of work. The 
establishment of the Government Savings' Bank is 
one of the most powerful levers at work for the 
raising and educating of the artisan and laboring 
classes ; any aid that you can give to the same 
principle in supporting your parish clothing, coal, 
etc. clubs is doubly well spent ; for it assists the 
needy at the present, and encourages a spirit of 
thrift and prudence for the future. 

As regards the third upon my list of begging 
letters, they come no doubt many of them from 
well-intentioned institutions ; but here too some 
care is demanded. Not a few of these societies are 
nothing more than schisms from old foundations ; 
and some are even schisms dissevered from the first 



HOW TO GIVE MONEY AWAY. 253 

schismatical deposit. They remind one of the case 
of a Scotch servant, who, applying to a lady for a 
place, hoped that she would be allowed to attend 
her own place of worship. " Certainly ; you be- 
long to the split, then ?" " No, m'm ; I belong to 
the split after the split had split." These succes- 
sive splits have really little claim upon our sym- 
pathy. Born in disunion, they have been nursed 
too often in the unwholesome atmosphere of faction, 
and slander, and quarreling; from repulsive little 
brats they have grown into an uglier and more 
mischievous manhood, and so have in turn begotten 
a second generation punier and more worthless, but 
still more clamorous and importunate than their 
parents. We need not be deceived by the vulgar 
argument that a great many good men support 
them ; a great many good men give their money to 
objects of which they know nothing, simply to 
deaden the incessant assault of applications. These 
societies are too often impostors. Look out the 
oldest societies for each specific object, and support 
those; and if assailed to assist the others on the 
score that you might give more to that object, the 
reply is obvious : if you have more, you give it to 
the first society, and not to its illegitimate offspring. 

22* 



254 HOW TO GIVE MONEY AWAY. 

There is scarcely a charitable cause that has not 
two or three societies supporting it, wasting the 
alms of their subscribers with duplicate offices, 
duplicate officers, and a double organization, and 
disgusting numbers of liberally disposed persons 
with applications for objects to which they have 
just subscribed. 

A word or two about another large class which 
has sprung into great luxuriance in the last twenty 
years. This class of society — say for distressed 
washerwomen — selects the recipients of its bounty 
by the votes of its subscribers, every subscriber of 
IZ., 10s., or in some cases of 5s., receiving a vote. 
If you want to be hunted perpetually for votes for 
distressed washerwomen, by all means subscribe 
your name and money too ; if, however, you value 
your time and peace, subscribe, if you approve, to 
the charity, but don't let your left hand know what 
your right hand has subscribed. Indeed, the nui- 
sance of this system has become so intolerable that 
steps are being taken by the managers of some of 
these charities to alter the system of election to 
them altogether. It is said (but such systematic 
meanness is scarcely credible) that numbers of sub- 
scribers would fall off at once if their names did 



HOW TO GIVE MONEY AWAY. 255 

not appear duly registered, and so they may enjoy 
at times a letter from a real peeress canvassing for 
some poor dependent. What would Thackeray 
have said to this sublimity of British flunkeyism ? 
One abuse of the system will be patent from the 
fact that it regularly costs about 25/. in writing 
and postage to secure votes in some of these socie- 
ties for an annuity of perhaps 20/., which, from the 
age of the candidate, is not worth more than five 
years' purchase. 

Of many of the charitable societies — of the sis- 
terhoods, for instance, the orphanages, homes for 
the destitute, hospitals, houses of refuge for the 
penitent, and many similar institutions, — which 
have been established within the last few years in 
many of our towns, it is impossible to speak except 
in terms of admiration and delight, and hopeful- 
ness for the country that has given birth to them. 
One I will mention particularly, because of its ex- 
treme simplicity. It is worked by men, is apparently 
independent of laws, exacts no particular dress, and 
purposes to give not money so much as personal 
service to the poor ; to visit them in their homes; 
assist them when needed, and report their cases to 
the clergyman of the parish. It is a cheering sign 



256 HOW TO GIVE MONEY AWAY. 

of the times to see many young men of good birth 
and high social position — officers of the Guards, 
not a few (so-called) idle men about London, busi- 
ness men who will make some spare, odds and ends 
of time for this work — join in an association for 
becoming personally acquainted with the needs of 
the poor. It is ignorance rather than selfishness 
that is at the root of our worst social evils. It is 
quite one thing to read a thrilling account of misery 
and suffering in a leading article, and another thing 
to go and see the horrible details, and minister to 
these shocking wants in person. There is an ap- 
palling truth at the bottom of that silly parody, 

** Whene'er I take my walks abroad, 
How many poor I see ; 
And 'cause I never speak to them, 
They never speak to me." 

And it is this : that between the life — comfortable, 
luxurious, refined, and intellectual — of the rich, and 
that of the poor — sordid and laborious, and often 
gross and vicious — there is a great gulf fixed. Our 
intellectual pursuits, as well as our luxurious in- 
dulgences, tend to widen that gulf daily. All 
honor to any society that will try to bridge it ; for 
it must be bridged otherwise than by the treach- 



HOW TO GIVE MONEY AWAY. 257 

eroas materials of self-interest. The weekly pay- 
ment and receipt of wages will never do it. As in 
surgery, so here, sympathy alone will unite a frac- 
tured limb. 

You are aware, no doubt, that the old charities, 
gifts left by will and distributed generally at Christ- 
mas, are very great throughout the country ; but 
it may be a novelty to you to hear that in many, 
perhaps in a large majority of cases, they are a 
curse rather than a blessing ; that the poor fore- 
stall them, claim them as a right, quarrel over 
them, lie and backbite for them, and then waste 
them ; that these gifts demoralize and even pau- 
perize parishes where they exist in large amounts ; 
and finally, that a considerable fraction, perhaps 
as much as half, goes straight into the hands of 
owners of cottages in these (unhappily) endowed 
parishes. Brilliantly as the abominations of these 
uncharitable charities were exposed by Mr. Glad- 
stone in a speech delivered a few years ago, these 
abuses might have been recounted in fourfold 
abundance. I know a parish well where, of two 
contiguous and perfectly similar cottages, one will 
pay one-third more rent than the other. The 
highly-rented one is just within the boundary-line 



258 HOW TO GIVE MONEY AWAY. 

of the highly-endowed parish. The neighboring 
parish, happily for its morality and industry, has 
no charities of any kind. Now in this, as in all 
abuses, there are hundreds, indeed thousands, in- 
terested. To sweep even the worst of them into a 
new channel, that should fertilize instead of wither- 
ing all in its course, would be resisted to the death. 
The battle will, however, have to be fought, per- 
haps ere long. Don't be biased by any views of 
mine, but think the question carefully over by 
yourself ; and when the time comes, act ; you are 
sure to have an opportunity for action in some line 
or other. 

I cannot better conclude than with the words of 
one who is old now, but during a long life has 
given largely, and now enjoys the happy recol- 
lection of acts of generous munificence : "Of all 
the money that I have given away in charity, none 
gives me more pleasure to remember than that 
which I have given to hospitals and schools. 
However greatly other charities may be, and are, 
abused, these can hardly be among their number; 
for no one will get into a hospital who can keep 
out of it; and though our old grammar-schools 
are still mostly in a state of decrepitude, no 



HOW TO GIVE MONEY AWAY. 259 

modern school can arrive at that condition for 
some time at least. A child must learn something 
there; and every something there learnt is a guar- 
antee against the abuse of that or any other school 
long after the time when I shall be dead and gone." 



XXII. 

A LITTLE LEARNING NOT K DANGEROUS THING, 

ANE would be curious to discover the originator 
^ of the proverb which affirms that a little 
learning is dangerous. Was he an unsuccessful 
inventor in Dean Swift's inimitable University of 
Laputa ? Or was it the fond parent who stoutly- 
insisted that her dear boy should never enter the 
water until he could swim ? 

And yet it is not so very astonishing that so 
silly a saying, once published, should attain a cer- 
tain circulation and notoriety. It has a degree of 
plausibility about it ; it strikes one, at its first 
introduction, as being redolent of profound study 
and the midnight oil, and has therefore served 
again and again the purpose of a convenient mask 
for idleness to play behind ; and yet, except on this 
score (which indeed would argue a vast amount of 
idleness in the world), a fallacy so transparent as 
this oaght not to have obtained as much credence 
(260) 



A LITTLE LEARNING NOT DANGEROUS. 2G1 

as this lias. Perhaps (like wearing spectacles) 
quoting such a proverb gives an air of depth and 
solidity of attainments; for assuredly, except as 
a fantasy, a spectral and not a real truth, it can 
hardly be believed in by a nation who in a thousand 
actions of their daily life display not so much a 
skeptical or hesitating belief in its truth as an 
absolute disbelief in it altogether. 

There is an amusing anecdote in a little book 
called Golden Deeds, of an Irish girl going with 
her mistress to get some gunpowder out of a bar- 
rel in an attic. On descending, the mistress hap- 
pily asked the maid what she had done with the 
candle. ''Forgot it, m'm; left it stuck in the 
barrel of black salt.''^ Now, doubtless her mis- 
tress knew no more about gunpowder than its 
terrible explosive qualities. Perhaps not many of 
US are prepared to pass much of an examination 
even on its materials, still less on the relative 
proportion of those materials or their manu- 
facture ; but at any rate the lady's little learning 
saved them (aided by considerable presence of 
mind) from the total annihilation which the maid's 
want of a little learning had prepared for them. 

23 



262 A LITTLE LEARNING NOT DANGEROUS. 

Of the two, there can hardly be a doubt here as to 
which was the "dangerous thing." 

Now this anecdote may be taken as a fair sam- 
ple of the experience of everyday life ; of the 
vexatious troubles brought about by the unac- 
countable absence of a little learning. I am not 
afraid of having quoted to me the witty remark 
made by a clever lawyer on reading the title of a 
law-book, Eve7^y Man his own Lawyer — " Then 
he would have a fool for his client." A little 
learning is just what is wanted to warn a man not 
to meddle with a profession he has not mastered. 
It does not need the .wisdom of a Solomon to 
advise an untaught countryman not to venture on 
a battle with a practiced pugilist. Let us take a 
few occasions in daily life where a little knowledge 
would be, as it has often been, of the very highest 
value. 

The knowledge of the fact that the two main 
constituents of our food are carbon and starch can 
hardly be called profound. Nor, again, of this 
fact, that what nature demands for its main sup- 
port is carbon in colder, and starch in warmer 
climates ; that is to say, more animal food the 
nearer you approach the poles, and more vegetable 



A LITTLE LEARNING NOT DANGEROUS. 263 

the nearer you approach the equator. Now there 
is no doubt that this little knowledge would be 
not dangerous, but most advantageous, to any 
young officer, or civilian, or merchant, starting for 
India, Burmah, China, and many other of our 
foreign possessions. 

There are literally scores of anecdotes of the 
hunting- and the battle-field which tell us how 
often a very little knowledge of surgery or of 
medicine has assuaged pain, and indeed stayed the 
approach of death itself. The construction of an 
extempore tourniquet to close a severed artery is 
not a work of either genius or elaborate skill ; it 
demands nothing but a stick, a stone, and a pocket- 
handkerchief or two; and yet how many valuable 
lives has this fragment, this shred of knowledge, 
preserved ! 

History tells us that the Marquis of Wellesley, 
while Governor-General of India, used to send 
dispatches to those of his subordinates who were 
scholars enough to understand them written in 
pure Attic Greek. Tippoo Sahib was well known 
to have interpreters at his court of every modern 
European language, but ancient Attic was too 
much for them. Other dispatches in various 



264 A LITTLE LEARNING NOT DANGEROUS. 

tongues had been intercepted and easily deci- 
phered ; these might be intercepted — that is the 
fate of war — bat not one ever gave up its secret. 

But it may be objected, this surely is an instance 
of the utility of not a little, but a great deal of 
knowledge. The Governor- General still lives fresh 
in the memory of Eton as a most accomplished 
scholar; almost dearer to his old school on that 
account than as a distinguished statesman. 

Hear, then, the following: I remember being 
shown, a short time after the Indian mutiny, a fac- 
simile of a dispatch which had been sent in a quill 
— the usual method in India — by Ingiis to Have- 
lock (undying names) respecting the best plan of 
entry into the walls of besieged Lucknow. Every 
proper name, both of place and person, was writ- 
ten in ancient Greek characters — the characters 
merely, there was not an attempt at expressing an 
idea in the Greek language; but by this simple 
expedient the message was made perfectly unintel- 
ligible to the army of the mutineers, had it fallen 
into their hands, while conveying the same in- 
formation that English would have done to the 
general to whom it was addressed. 

Of the blunders that are almost daily made from 



A LITTLE LEARNING NOT DANGEROUS. 265 

want of the most rudimentary knowledge of art 
the newspapers all furnish frequent instances. A 
year or two ago an amusing instance came into 
court, when it appeared that some wealthy sim- 
pleton had purchased what he believed to be gen- 
uine pictures by Michael Angelo and Raphael, 
which were really copies of copies of their great 
originals, manufactured at so much the square foot 
in Manchester. Now even if he could not tell a 
picture from a daub, it would have required but a 
very little literary knowledge of art to be aware 
that the originals were in one or other of the great 
galleries or churches on the Continent — some, per- 
haps, that he had hurried past while accomplishing, 
as Englishmen will in their travels, the greatest 
amount of space in the smallest amount of time. 

What anecdotes of ruinous blundering cannot 
builders tell, all arising from their employers' 
ignorance, not of details — that is the builder's 
business — but of the first idea or conception of the 
thing house! Despite the truth that medical 
science reiterates about light and sunshine being 
the first necessaries of health, how many new 
houses are thoughtlessly built to face the north 
and northeast; though, if medical science had 

23* 



266 A LITTLE LEARNING NOT DANGEROUS. 

been silent, the experience and example of the 
great builders of the Middle Ages coigbt have 
made us wiser in our generation. You will find 
that, with hardly an exception, in our climate at 
least, the cathedral or huge monastery church 
stood at the north side of the whole range of 
buildings, protecting the cloisters, refectory, and 
dormitory from the cold winds, and leaving them 
open to the warmth of the south. That this did 
not arise from an accidental or a conventional style 
of arrangement is clear from the fact that in Spain 
the cloister court is found on the north side of the 
church for coolness. ' 

I will add but one more illustration from build- 
ing. The very simple law of capillary attraction 
is well known, by which bricks or any porous ma- 
terial will sop up water to any height; so that the 
floor and even the roof-timbers will be kept con- 
stantly damp if laid on bricks, which, again, are 
placed upon a damp soil; yet, despite this Tery 
simple and self-evident fact, hovy many houses are 
built by men regardless of the easy expedient of 
inserting a layer of slates in cement just below the 
lowest floor-timbers, so as to cut off the rising 
moisture once and for all I 



A LITTLE LEARNING NOT DANGEROUS. 26Y 

Now as all wide-spread fallacies have always 
been based upon a perverted or concealed truth, 
let us see what the grain of hidden truth is in this 
case. Is it not this ? that a little knowledge, if 
you think it big when it really is little, is a dan- 
gerous thing ? which in other words mean this, 
that it is not the little knowledge that is dangerous 
at all, but your taking a false estimate of it. Now 
this truth is undeniable ; but it is equally true that 
a proverb which demands so much explanation, so 
many addenda et corrigenda, is a very clumsy 
piece of workmanship indeed ; and when to this 
you add the undeniable fact that it has been made 
the excuse for a multitude of sins of idleness, it 
does deserve the treatment that the jackdaw in the 
fable received, who decked himself out in the bor- 
rowed peacock plumes. In fact there are two dis- 
tinct truths involved in this clumsy and pretentious 
apothegm, neither of which is, however, at all fully 
conveyed in it: the first of which is, "be modest 
about what you know;" and the second, "do not 
despise any knowledge, however slight or- even 
fragmentary;" correct it if possible, and reclaim it 
from its fragmentary state into order and system 
if you can ; but whether you can systematize it or 



268 A LITTLE LEARNING NOT DANGEROUS. 

not, still be ever collecting knowledge from all 
quarters, acquire it through every avenue of in- 
formation — through conversation no less than 
through books, through the eye no less than the 
ear. Much of Shakspeare's ripeness and extraor- 
dinary accuracy of knowledge must have come — as 
we know from his biography that Goethe's did — 
from observation of mechanics at their work, from 
noticing the conduct and language of workmen in 
their fields, in their ships, at their markets, in their 
churches, or in their shops. It is a part of an old, 
old truth, but capable of wider interpretation than 
it generally receiYes—despise not small things. 



XXIII. 

HINTS ON THE STUDY OF SHAKSPEARE. 

YOU tell me that, much as you wish it were 
otherwise, you find Shakspeare very heavy 
reading, and you heartily wish you could feel some 
of the intense admiration with which all Shak- 
speare readers speak of his works. You are con- 
vinced that the man whom Goethe and Coleridge 
illustrated and Schiller translated, whom all the 
greatest authors united in honoring, must indeed 
be great : and you tell me you have lately seen it 
noticed that the number of copies of Shakspeare 
taken out of the Manchester free library is greater 
than that of almost any other book ; proving that 
not only the literati, the men who read Homer and 
Dante and Goethe, but that many of the artisan 
class delight in the works of him whom the 
Germans characteristically entitle "the myriad- 
minded." 

1 will, then, in this letter, give you a few hints — 

(269) 



2*70 ON THE STUDY OF SHAKSPEARE. 

set up, SO to say, a few finger-posts in the route for 
you to travel over ; the route, or one very similar 
to it, that all must have traveled over to their 
goal; which is the delight inspired by the beauty 
and aptness of the language, the depth of thought, 
the delineation of feelings of awe and mirth, of 
love and phrensy, combined in one vast picture. 

And first you should clearly understand that 
your difficulty is not unique in this particular. 
You could as little, without artistic and archi- 
tectural study, comprehend a cathedral in all the 
grandeur of its design and the loveliness of its de- 
tails, or a great picture in its variety of excellences, 
as you can comprehend one of Shakspeare's vast 
life-pictures : indeed the latter is the most difficult 
achievement of any ; higher mental powers are 
taxed to comprehend such a play as Hamlet or 
Lear than are called into play to appreciate any 
art. And yet you would, I dare say, feel as help- 
less before, for instance, that grand picture of the 
Supper in Cana of Paul Yeronese in the Louvre, 
where at the first glance we feel a dim sense of 
beauty, of lovely color, of graceful form, of ani- 
mated expression; but without some explanation, 
without some acquired knowledge of art, we can 



ON THE STUDY OF SHAKSPEARE. 271 

hardly advance much further. But when we 
analyze the painting in detail, and know that the 
musicians (I take the foreground first) are por- 
traits of the great painters of the day, including 
such names as Tintoret and Titian ; the guests on 
the left of the picture are all portraits of the great 
monarchs of a period of great monarchs, — Charles 
the Fifth and Francis the First, and Solyraan "the 
Magnificent," — we begin to feel that there is a 
historical greatness in the work, independent of 
artistic worth. Add to this the skill with which 
the painter has represented the preparation for a 
feast on the gallery in the background, thus com- 
bining (in dramatic language) subordinate scenes 
with the main plot of the play. Add to this the 
skillful introduction of severe lines of architecture 
on either side, to act as foils to the graceful shapes 
and flowing robes of the feasters; then consider 
the masterly drawing, the rich and yet subdued 
coloring. Add to this again the life thrown into 
every detail, down to the cat sharpening its claws 
upon the embossed sides of a silver vase, and the 
leash of hounds, one of which pulls away from his 
sleepy fellow as it eagerly watches the cat. Add to 
all this the solemn central figures; — and we then 



272 ON THE STUDY OF SHAKSPEARE. 

begin to appreciate the work by degrees in its full- 
ness. Last of all, perhaps, you feel that, however 
many anachronisms there may be — Italian archi- 
tecture, kingly guests, modern musical instruments 
in a sacred subject — yet it is a thoroughly perfect 
and complete picture, conveying the impression that 
thus He would have appeared among men at rich 
men's tables, had He come in later times : and as 
we remember this, the anachronism is but one of 
time; there is no unreality about it, even as a 
sacred picture ; while the introduction of the pecu- 
liarities of the artist's own time vastly enhances the 
value of the picture in a historical and artistic 
point of view. 

Apply this principle of study, of gradual com- 
prehension, to a play of Shakspeare, and you will 
find, if I mistake not, that fully three readings of 
a play are required if you would really appreciate 
not "the beauties of Shakspeare," but Shakspeare 
himself. The first reading, to master the diffi- 
culties of the language; the second, to compre- 
hend each leading character singly ; the third, to 
grasp the meaning and completeness of the play as 
a whole. 

There is no need of entering now into the reasons 



ON THE STUDY OP SHAKSPEARE. 273 

why the mere text of Shakspeare is full of diffi- 
culties ; but they arise mainly from two sources : 
1st, language; 2clly, grammar. 

It is confessedly impossible to understand an 
author unless you are perfectly acquainted with his 
language. Now if you really think that Shak- 
speare presents but few difficulties of language, 
pray undeceive yourself by running your eye down 
a good glossary of his words and phrases : the ob- 
solete expressions alone are very numerous ; and 
be sure that until you comprehend these as readily 
as you enter into the language of daily life, you 
can't really comprehend Shakspeare. The grammar 
is another difficulty ; but this arises from a totally 
different cause, which is the closeness of the 
thought on the part of the speaker. If you have 
any doubts on this head, let me refer you to that 
famous speech of Macbeth's, beginning " To be 
thus is nothing;" and you will quickly change your 
opinion on this head also. I believe that these 
two difficulties alone are the greatest impediments 
to the interest that Shakspeare would otherwise 
create in the mind of every educated Englishman. 
They are really more serious impediments, because 

24 



2*74 ON THE STUDY OP SHAKSPEARE, 

they are often overlooked from being undervalued : 
scenes are consequently but half understood, all 
strength and life have evaporated, the portrait is 
like that in a blurred photograph, where you would 
hardly recognize even a well-known friend after the 
unskillful treatment he has undergone. 

Now, next to understanding the phraseology and 
grammar of a play, which is in itself no light work, 
you should try and gain a distinct conception of 
the drift and meaning of each individual character. 
Therefore, as a second matter of study, I should 
say, take in turn each great character — say four or 
five in the play — and read their parts straight 
through, with only as much of the context as will 
throw light upon the single character you are 
studying. To make my meaning clearer : take, 
for instance, the first part of King Henry IV. — 
Knight's, or any good edition, will tell you at the 
beginning of the play in what acts and scenes each 
character appears : — take Hotspur ; he first ap- 
pears in act i. scene 3, where his character soon 
displays itself as bold, impetuous, irritable, incon- 
siderate, reckless of consequences, ready to beard 
the king to his face, and then joining any intemper- 



ON THE STUDY OP SHAKSPEARE. 2*75 

ate scheme for revenge ; in act ii. scene 3, he is all 
ardor and excitement for the campaign, parrying 
his wife's attempts to discover the secret of his 
warlike preparations, scoffing at the faint-hearted- 
ness of those who are less impetuous than himself; 
in act iii. scene 1, his reckless overbearing spirit 
leads him to insult the calm and dignified, but vain 
and superstitious Glendower, then quarrel with him 
about a few pounds'- worth of land, mock at his ac- 
complishments, irritate to the last degree *the man 
whose aid would be a mainstay in their treasonable 
enterprise ; and at the close of the scene his man- 
ners and language, rough and somewhat coarse, 
show the want of all real refinement beneath the 
brilliant display of courage, hardihood, and resolu- 
tion ; and thus he continues on to the last. The con- 
sistency of his character will force itself upon your 
notice when you read these scenes consecutively. 
And when you have thus studied a few of the lead- 
ing characters carefully and at length, you will be 
prepared for the last reading, which will then pre- 
sent the play before you as a whole. 

There are two points of view from which a play 
of Shakspeare's may be regarded : either as a work 



2t6 ON THE STUDY OF SHAKSPEARE. 

of art, or (which is the higher view still) as a 
practical lesson in the conduct of affairs in life ; 
and perhaps, in studying a play as a whole, you 
will do well to examine it from these two different 
points of view separately, at least in those plays 
that you make a systematic study of. And in 
studying a play as a work of art, you will notice 
the skill with which the author strikes the key-note 
of the coming plot in the first scene, however 
short that scene may be. In the play we have 
just been considering, the main plot is a most dan- 
gerous, though unsuccessful rebellion ; and in the 
first lines we see the coming tempest, the little 
cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, on the horizon. 
Then you will notice the skill with which the comic 
and the serious scenes are interwoven : the truth- 
ful picture of life there given, not all laughter, not 
all tears; L^ Allegro and II Penseroso ever side by 
side, as Milton has embodied them for all time. 
And thus by these and similar observations you 
will soon be led to appreciate the greatness of the 
work as merely ^'a work of art. But how much 
higher greatness do these plays disclose in gauging 
the powers and sounding the passions of mankind ! 



ON THE STUDY OF SHAKSPEARE. 277 

This, the highest walk of criticism, you must not 
expect to tread early in your studies ; it is only by 
slow degrees and enlarged knowledge of character 
that you will learn to appreciate the truths under- 
lying often the lightest as well as the most serious 
scenes ; the deep insight into human nature in not 
one but a thousand varieties ; the strange apparent 
inconsistencies of the same character, — noble in one 
direction, commonplace and even sordid in another; 
the noble Macbeth a murderer, while maxims of 
wisdom fall from the lips of the old dotard Polo- 
nius ; the natural consistency of a character with 
itself at different periods of life, though brought 
on the stage at only one of those periods : take, 
for instance. Justice Shallow, who appears only in 
age, a liar, drunkard, boaster, and fool ; the natu- 
ral conclusion to a youth which he describes himself 
as frivolous, idle, and debauched. 

And lastly, consider the many and great lessons 
that each play conveys as a whole. The deadly 
poison of temptation once tampered with, its power 
to ruin a noble soul like Macbeth's ; the unbalanced 
judgment, and impotency of decision, the slavery 
to the impulse of the moment in Richard II.; the 



278 ON THE STUDY OP SHAKSPEARE. 

ruin of "ill-weaved ambition" in Hotspur and 
Wolsey; the loss of all peace coincident with the 
loss of faith in goodness in Othello ; the total 
paralysis inflicted upon the highest intellectual 
powers by indecision and procrastination in Ham- 
let ; the brutal ignorance and senseless inconsist- 
ency of mobs, the need that every one who thinks 
he stands should take heed to his falling, in An- 
gelo ; the close alliance between a life of sensuality 
on the one hand, and lying, boasting, slander, and 
all the meaner vices on the other, in Lucio in the 
same play; — all these there are, and a thousand 
more lessons, expressed too in a spirit of the truest 
morality ; no glozing over vice with specious words 
and sugared phrases ; the old profligate Falstaff, 
with all his wit, is not only detected and exposed, 
but (what vice hates tenfold worse) baffled and rid- 
iculed by the Merry Wives of Windsor. All this 
will become an open book to you, very easy to 
decipher at a glance, when you have once honestly 
toiled your way up the ascent; but here, as else- 
where, there is no royal road to learning. You 
must be perfectly acquainted with the language the 
poet employs, and be able to unravel his closest 



ON THE STUDY OF SHAKSPEARE. 219 

grammatical constructions ; you must have steadily 
studied individual characters, and mastered some 
of the earlier and easier plays, before you can 
unseal the riddle of the mystic book at a glance, 
and ever draw fresh streams from the ever-spring- 
ing fountain, and learn the words of wisdom, and 
gain all the pleasure and enjoyment of reading, 
which is the lot of those to whom his characters 
are "familiar in their mouths as household words." 



THE END. 



